


House Divided

by hilandmum



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-09
Updated: 2010-02-09
Packaged: 2017-10-07 03:36:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/61009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hilandmum/pseuds/hilandmum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What might happen to the team without the presence of Cameron as their moral compass? An angsty take on their downward spiral precipitated by a case involving Taub's neighbor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	House Divided

**Author's Note:**

> A cautionary tale, taken from The Adventures of Gregory House by Dr. James Wilson
> 
> Beta: The marvelous DaisyB10

### A HOUSE DIVIDED

A cautionary tale, taken from _ The Adventures of Gregory House _ by Dr. James Wilson

### Prologue

Laura Musgrove climbed up the stepladder and began to take the books from the top of her bookcase. The first was a college yearbook. She leafed through the pages and smiled wistfully as she turned to Gary's graduation picture.

_Graduation. That was the night he proposed to me._

Little did they know back then, they'd only have five years together after they married.

_ It was just a freak accident. That's what they said._

All I know is he shouldn't have died like that. He shouldn't have even been on the factory floor. He was an accountant, for Heaven's sake. He didn't care about machinery. So did that bigwig insist on sending Gary to watch the mechanics fire up that fifty grand packaging machine?

She'd never know.

"Laura, do you want to pass me the books?"

"Hmmm?" Laura replied, snapped out of her reverie. "Sorry Carol. Here you go."

Carol Sloan was a bubbly blond who was a lot smarter than she looked or acted. She was one of the friends who were helping Laura pack up her belongings to move herself and her fourteen-month-old son Davey back home to Latrobe, Pennsylvania, where her family still lived. She and Gary had made friends during their time in a middle-class suburb of Princeton, New Jersey, but friends weren't family, even the families they had, somewhat cold and unsupportive.

"This box is almost full," Carol said, carefully placing a few paperbacks on top of the others she'd already packed.

"There are some empty boxes in the living room," Laura told her.

But before Carol could leave the den, Laura's other friend, Rachel Taub, came from the back of the sprawling ranch-style house. "The baby's up. Do you think I should change him?"

Carol looked back at Laura for an answer, but she was no longer on the ladder. Instead, she lay on the ground near it, completely still.

"Laura!" Carol exclaimed, bending to look at her friend. Rachel soon joined her, and checked Laura's pulse.

"I'll call 911!" Rachel said. Her husband was a doctor and it looked like her young friend needed medical help, stat.

 

### Chapter 1.

This story started for us long before we knew anything about it, or about Laura Musgrove, but that was about to change.

For over ten years now, as long as I've known Gregory House, I've followed his cases, marveling over and over at the workings of his superior brain. But it wasn't until recently, as a way to avoid thinking about what I'd lost when my girlfriend Amber died, that I decided I wanted to record his cases for posterity, sort of Watson to his Holmes.

I'd seen him through the infarction that led to the huge scar and chronic pain in his thigh, and the demise of his relationship with his love of five years, Stacy. In turn, he's seen me through three failed marriages. Some people wonder how we've remained friends all this time, and occasionally I've wondered that myself. But friends we were.

House and I were discussing our boss, hospital administrator extraordinaire. Lisa Cuddy's latest outfit, a very demure shirtwaist dress with a high collar, was very unusual for her. Of course, she HAD to open one button too many, as House was commenting when Chris Taub, a member of his staff, entered his office.

"House, I have a case for you," the short doctor said.

 

"Not interested," House said, dismissing him, and leaning back in his office chair.

"But you haven't heard anything about it. How can you tell?" Taub's slightly raspy voice demanded.

"Don't get me wrong, Taub, but if you're the one bringing the case to me, how interesting could it be?"

House is almost a foot taller than the former plastic surgeon so when he stood up, he towered over him.

But Taub was used to House and wouldn't be denied. He went on. "Thirty-one year old woman, fell from a step on a ladder no more than four feet above the ground, but she's still unconscious four days later. There's no sign of any contusions."

"See, I told you it wouldn't be interesting. She's got a concussion," House stated as if that was that.

"The CT scan ruled out a concussion," Taub persisted. "There's something else wrong, but the doctors at Princeton General refuse to look further. They're just waiting for her to wake up on her own."

"And you care because?" House seemed more curious about Taub's interest in the case than in the case itself.

Taub sighed. He knew he'd have to come clean with House about why this case was important to him. "The patient's our neighbor. My wife and I are taking care of her son, a toddler, fourteen months old."

"Where's the husband?" House asked.

"He died in a freak industrial accident about four months ago," Taub said, and for the first time since he'd entered House's office he saw a spark of interest in House's eyes.

"You don't seem too thrilled to be stuck with the kid. I thought you wanted a child."

"After a few days with David, I'm beginning to rethink that," Taub said. "Don't get me wrong, he's a good baby. But Rachel and I had a routine, including lots of time together. Now, she's either tired from taking care of Davey, or he needs her attention..."

"...and you're left out in the cold." House nodded. "OK, we don't have another patient. Guess we can take a look at wifey's friend."

House arranged to have Laura Musgrove transferred to his department at PPTH from Princeton General. The doctors there were stumped and weren't at all reluctant to let her go. Over the next day, House and his team reviewed the earlier test results. Every time I walked by outside, I could hear their heated discussion through the glass walls.

"She hit her head when she fell. Of course, it's a concussion!" Thirteen insisted. Her name's really Remy Hadley, but when House selected her from a group of forty, he called her by her candidate number, thirteen, and the nickname stuck.

"But the CT scan ruled that out," Foreman argued. The black man had been on House's team for almost six years and had briefly been in charge. He'd also briefly romanced Thirteen.

"Had she been dizzy before she fell?" House asked.

"Laura was fine, according to Rachel and their friend, Carol," Taub replied. "But she was under a lot of stress." He'd seen it himself the last time he was with Laura.

"Any history of low blood pressure?" Chase asked, mainly to say something. Robert Chase, a good-  
looking young Australian had been with House the longest. But I don't think his heart or his mind were on the case. Since his wife, Allison Cameorn, left, some of his enthusiasm for his work had gone with her.

"Not that I know of." Taub looked at his colleagues. "You think the fall was the _result_ of her losing consciousness rather than the cause?"

"It's possible," Foreman said, not willing to commit to anything until he'd examined the woman himself.

"None of the initial test results indicated any of the usual causes for her to have become comatose so quickly." Thirteen had been reading through the file, trying to find something, anything that could help their diagnosis.

"And now she's been in a coma for four days. So whatever the cause, the effect has lasted," House pointed out. "We have to deal with her current state. Go get another CT scan and compare it to the one that was done when she was admitted to Princeton General," he ordered Taub. "Thirteen, be useful, get some blood and let's see what her levels are."

"Maybe there were two separate conditions that made her fall and lose consciousness," Foreman suggested after Taub and Thirteen left.

"You want the best of both worlds?" House asked. He shook his head. "As possible as that is, it's hardly probable."

Foreman frowned, then stood. "I'm going to help Taub."

"What, not your former girlfriend?" House asked. "'Fraid you'll freeze if you get too near her cold shoulder?"

"My relationship with Remy is none of your business," Foreman said indignantly before turning on his heels and leaving the conference room. Chase decided to make himself scarce before House began to pick on him too.

Left alone, House continued sitting where he was, eyes fixed on the symptoms on the white board. As I entered I heard him say, "How likely is it that someone falls on their head from a height of four or five feet and doesn't have a concussion?" he asked. I didn't know whether he realized I'd come in. Was he just talking to himself?

"Were you talking to me?" I asked to be sure.

"Thirty-one year old female falls from a ladder four days ago and has been in a coma ever since," House said.

"I was here when Taub brought you the case," I reminded him. "She did hit her head, didn't she?"

"Yes, but there's no sign of a concussion, not even a little bump on her noggin," House expanded.

"You've got a new puzzle," I stated. "Why did she fall?"

"That, my dear Wilson, is the sixty-four thousand dollar question."

Taub rushed in. "Her O2 sat level is dropping! It's down to 89."

"Good. We have a new symptom," House said with a diabolical smile.

It always amazes me how much pleasure he takes in medical mysteries. I sometimes wonder if solving one gives him the same rush as he gets from good sex.

"What medications was she on?" House asked.

"There's no record of any," Taub replied.

"Guess it's time for you to visit the scene of the crime," House responded.

"It wasn't a crime." Taub looked confused, but left anyway.

House turned back to his board. "We're missing something," he said, as he added 'low blood oxygen' to the list.

How many times had I heard him utter those very words?

As I chronicle his cases, how many times has that exact phrase 'We're missing something', appeared? I know what you're thinking, and yes, every time, he found out what they were missing, sometimes even with my help, and he was able to solve the mystery. But not this time.

I decided I should at least try to be useful. "Do you have the initial CT scan?"

"Taub took it to compare to a new one," he said. "I can assure you. There was nothing on either one to indicate a concussion."

"What about blood tests? I mean, besides the oxygen level," I asked.

He picked up the file, and looked through it. "Guess they never did any. Or if they did, they've gone missing. That's odd in itself." He smiled as Hadley returned. "Thirteen, have I got a job for you!"

She looked at him warily. "I'm not going to kiss the patient."

"Hmmm," he seemed to consider that, remembering the case where shd'd become romantically involved with a female patient. "No, actually blood would be better than saliva."

"You just sent me to take some blood," she asked. "You want more? What do you think I am, a vampire?"

"Are you?" he asked rhetorically. "We need more. Check for toxins, although, if there were any, they'll probably be out of her system by now," he speculated.

"Right." She smirked but went to do the tests anyway.

"Time for you to buy me lunch," House said.

I sighed. I'm always buying him lunch. Maybe someday he'll pay, but I wasn't holding my breath. I know I shouldn't indulge him, but what does it hurt? He could be asking me to finance some of his other vices. We adjourned to the cafeteria and I paid for two lunches, knowing House would eat one and as much of mine as I'd let him.

"Do you really think there was something else wrong with your patient? Something that caused her fall from the ladder?" I asked.

"It's beginning to seem likely," was all he said.

By the time we returned to his office after lunch, Taub was back from the patient's home. "There were no prescription drugs in her medicine cabinet or night table. Just some aspirin and acetaminophen, and some vitamins for her and the baby," he reported. "I checked for anything else that might have poisoned her, but there was nothing."

"Well, that shoots that theory," House said. "What else could it be?"

Taub didn't have an answer. He sat down, waiting for his next assignment. While House continued to ponder the whiteboard, Foreman and Thirteen reappeared.

"Blood counts are normal. She's perfectly healthy," Thirteen said. "The tox screen might take a while, but as you said, it'll probably be clear by now."

"And with the absence of a fever, it's obviously not an infection," Foreman added.

"We'll just have to wait until another symptom emerges," House said. "How's her oxygen level now?"

"It hasn't gone up much. Hovering around 89-90," Thirteen reported.

"What did she have for lunch?" House suddenly asked out of the blue. "The day she took the header."

Thirteen began to look in the file to see if there was a record, but Taub said, " Rachel probably knows."

"Then don't stand there looking like a hook-nosed gnome! Call your wife!" House ordered.

Taub took out his phone and did as he was told.

"When she answers, put it on speaker," House added to his demands.

Soon we all heard Taub's wife say, "Hi Chris. I'm glad you called. I just put Davey down for a nap."

"Hi, Rachel. Listen. Do you know what Laura had for lunch the day she fell?" Taub asked.

"Well, yes. Carol and I were there from ten in the morning on. We helped Laura pack up her dishes and pots ..."

"We don't need a play-by-play description, just what she ate," House interrupted impatiently.

"Who's that?" a confused Rachel asked.

"It's House," Taub told her. "Just tell us what she had for lunch."

Rachel's sigh was audible. "At noon we stopped and she made some tuna salad. She uses celery, onions, carrots and pickles in hers. It was very good."

House rolled his eyes, but the truth was that the ingredients could well be important.

"She served it with those grape tomatoes you always like, and also potato salad," Rachel went on.

"Did everyone eat the same thing?" House asked. It was beginning to sound as if this line of questioning wouldn't get him anywhere.

"Well, yes. And Carol brought her carrot cake, so we each had a small piece for dessert, oh, and I forgot to say, we drank iced tea with our lunch," Rachel reported.

"Were there any leftovers?" House asked.

"I...I think so. If there were, they're still in the refrigerator at Laura's. Did you want me to go look?" she volunteered. "Oh, wait! Chris, you have the keys!" Rachel Taub exclaimed.

"You used keys to get in?" House sneered at Taub.

Taub rolled his eyes. "I was supposed to pick up some stuff for Davey on my way home," he explained to House. "Would you have preferred it if I broke in?"

I chuckled. Knowing House, I was sure he would.

He bunched up his lips, then said, "I guess you're 'it' again. Go check the food in the refrigerator."

"Botulism could cause temporary muscle paralysis that, in turn, would cause her to fall," Foreman speculated, but we all knew that.

"That's a delayed reaction – hours at least," Thirteen argued.

"Thanks, Rachel," Taub told his wife, ignoring them. "I'll see you later. You just need clothes, diapers and baby food for Davey?"

"Yes. I hope you find out what happened to Laura," she said wistfully.

"We'll do all we can," he said. "Bye Rachel," and he closed the connection. He waved the keys at everyone else, and then left.

But Thirteen wasn't done. "Botulism wouldn't lower her O2 sat."

"But if her fall caused a cerebral clot, that might lower oxygen concentration in the blood," Foreman argued, taking a not so secret delight in refuting his ex-girlfriend's idea.

"Was there any indication of a blood clot on her brain scan?" House asked.

They both shook their heads.

"Can't any of you morons come up with a decent idea?! Just one idea that makes sense, that's all I want!" House slammed his cane on the conference room table adding emphasis to the frustration that was evident in his voice.

Stunned by his outburst, no one said a word. We watched in eerie silence as House rubbed his face wearily and sank into his chair at the conference table.

"We're still missing something, people," he said with intimidating softness. "Let's figure out what it is, before it's too late."

 

### Chapter 2.

As Taub reentered Laura's house, he remembered all of the times that he and Rachel had spent with Laura and her husband Gary. It was the birth of their son Davey that had sparked a change in Taub's attitude about having kids. Laura and Gary seemed closer once they had a baby. He hoped that having a child would save his marriage to Rachel.

After Gary's death, Rachel spent lots of time with Laura and Davey, and Taub thought that maybe she'd changed her mind and wanted her own baby, after all. She was fascinated with Davey, the daily changes in his abilities and the visceral pleasure she got from holding him. She often volunteered to baby sit. Taub never objected.

But he also remembered the times he'd spent alone with Laura. She was so young and beautiful, so irresistible. He was happy to provide any comfort she wanted, and comforting hugs led to other things, things that brought them both pleasure. He could still remember the taste of her lips, the softness of her skin. He shook his head to clear his thoughts. There was no sense thinking about that now.

Taub took the leftovers he found in the refrigerator and packed them in an insulated shopping bag he found in the kitchen. As he closed the refrigerator door, his eyes were drawn to pictures of the baby with Laura and with Rachel. His wife looked so happy holding Davey, happier than he'd seen her since she'd found out that he'd cheated on her.

That affair had nearly destroyed his marriage. Yet, despite the feelings of guilt, and the knowledge that he'd come close to losing Rachel and his career, he had easily fallen into a sexual relationship with Laura. Rachel didn't know anything about him and Laura, though, and he was hoping she never would. He'd do anything to prevent that.

An hour after he left the hospital, Taub returned with the shopping bag full of containers and began to empty the bag onto the glass conference table. "Tuna salad, tomatoes, potato salad, carrot cake, and a piece of cheese that Rachel didn't mention, but I thought it should be tested anyway."

Foreman, Thirteen and I just stared at all the food, but House reached for the tuna container, opened the lid, then rose to look for something near the coffee machine. He returned with a plastic spoon and began to eat.

Taub shook his head. "I thought we were going to test this stuff for toxins!" he sputtered. "What are you doing?"

"I want to see if tuna with all those veggies is really as good as your wife said," House explained. I know it must have seemed logical to him, but the rest of us were flabbergasted.

House looked at our stunned expressions. "Oh, c'mon! If there was something wrong with the food, Taub's wife and that other woman would've gotten sick too!" He took another spoonful. "Hmmm, this is good."

"You know this leaves us with no clue as to what caused her fall or why she's still unconscious," Foreman complained.

"Have a piece of this carrot cake," House told him. "Best I've ever tasted. Wilson, you should take baking lessons from this Carol."

Thirteen groaned and rolled her eyes. "House, what do you want us to do about the patient?"

"Oh, right," he said as if he suddenly remembered that was why they were there. "Go scope her intestines," he ordered.

Shrugging their shoulders, Thirteen and Foreman went off to do yet another, probably useless test.

Taub was still staring at the food he'd brought.

"Want some?" House asked.

He shook his head as he muttered, "No thanks, I'm not hungry," and hurried out the door. Something

had occurred to him, something he really wasn't prepared to deal with.

_It can't be, can it?  
But all the symptoms fit.  
Laura was poisoned. But not by some bacteria, it's cyanide!_

Cyanide poisoning could have affected Laura's muscles, causing her fall, and could also lead to decreased oxygen levels in the blood.

I'm an idiot. That's absurd. Where would the cyanide have come from? Certainly not the food. Someone would have to have given it to Laura in some form, not in the food that others would eat, but what? Cyanide poisoning could lead to death. Who would want that beautiful and sweet woman dead? And why?

 

\--

Even though Taub thought he was being clever to think of cyanide poisoning, he wasn't the only one to have that idea. Foreman and Hadley were deep into a heated discussion about the very same possible diagnosis.

"The intestinal scans didn't show any blockage," Foreman said. "What about cyanide?"

"That's ridiculous!" Thirteen said. "Where would she get cyanide poisoning? And besides, wouldn't her nails be blue?"

"You're thinking of silver," Foreman argued. "Cyanide fits. The loss of muscle control, the low oxygen pressure."

"But her skin wasn't pink. That's definitely a sign of cyanide poisoning," she said.

"We still should do a tox screen to see if there are any residues," he insisted.

"After four days?" She was dubious.

"Cyanide is one of those poisons that are retained in organs and tissues," Foreman said. So they did the test and waited for the results. As Thirteen predicted, the tox screen didn't show anything, and they finally dismissed that diagnosis.

\--

Five minutes after I left him to prepare for my rounds, House burst into my office and sprawled on my couch.

"What part of 'I have to get back to work' didn't you understand?" I asked, knowing the answer all too well.

Not surprisingly, House ignored me. "It's not cyanide poisoning, although that might fit some of the symptoms. So what's left?"

I wasn't sure he expected me to answer. I didn't have any new ideas so I just kept my mouth shut. Since my silence didn't help, he turned around and left.

\--

Taub was still thinking that cyanide was the answer.

_It has to be cyanide!  
Oh, no, did Rachel have anything to do with it? Did she find out about my affair with Laura? How could she? We were so careful!_

Did she do it for little Davey? She seems to love that little boy. No, Rachel wouldn't kill Laura so she could take her child!

I have to protect Rachel!  
What if Laura dies?  
What if the police suspect Rachel? There was motive. And opportunity.

If I hurry, I can cure Laura before anyone figures it out.  
No one will ever have to know what really happened.

But it's been four days.  
The usual treatment for cyanide poisoning is nitrites and sodium thiosulfate, or hydroxycobalamine, but those had to be administered immediately after the poisoning occurred.

Still, I can treat Laura with dicobalt EDTA to bind the cyanide, and act as an antidote.

\--

Once Taub started down this road, there was no way to stop it. His train of thought led him into a moral abyss. Eventually all of House's team, and even the rest of us, would follow him.

Taub didn't tell Foreman, Thirteen, Chase and especially House what he planned to do. In this state of mind, the thought never occurred to him that other cobalt complexes could form in her blood if it wasn't cyanide, and those other complexes were quite toxic in themselves. None of the nurses questioned his orders for the patient.

It wasn't until Laura became worse, rather than better, that he realized his mistake.

By then it was too late.

Within twelve hours, Laura Musgrove was dead.

 

### Chapter 3.

"She wasn't getting better, but she wasn't getting worse," Foreman said when he heard. "What happened?"

"The only way we can find out would be to do an autopsy," Thirteen told him.

Taub looked at them but didn't say anything.

_An autopsy? If they do an autopsy, they'll find out the truth...about everything.  
What killed Laura, how I treated her for cyanide poisoning.  
And then they'll start wondering why._

"I'll do it," he volunteered.

"I'll help you," Chase offered, and Taub couldn't refuse, especially since he'd never done an autopsy before.

Laura's body had already been moved to the hospital morgue. As the two doctors took the elevator down, Chase began to wonder why Taub was so insistent on doing the autopsy. He studied the shorter man's face, but there were no clues there.

"We're here to do an autopsy on Laura Musgrove," Chase told the attendant in the morgue.

The stooped old man led them to her body. "Usually Dr. Crawford does 'em," he said.

"We worked on her case, and there's still some question about the cause of her death," Taub explained.

The attendant nodded and brought them a tray of scalpels and saws and other implements that they'd need, then left them to their chore.

As a plastic surgeon, Taub had only cut the surface of his patients in a way that would improve their outer appearance and leave as few scars as possible. And as a surgeon, Chase had experience using a scalpel to carefully cut through the flesh to expose a body part that needed repair.

Neither of them was used to the deep invasion of the body necessary to determine the cause of death. There'd be no need to worry about how the body would look afterward, no need to watch vital signs or be concerned with the patient crashing on the table. It should have been a snap.

"Shall we start?" Chase asked with a sigh. Taub began the external examination, taking hair, nail and skin samples for analysis for toxins. There were no visible causes of death that he could observe. Then Chase made the Y incision and opened Laura's chest to observe her heart and lungs. He removed the organs to examine them for disease, but they too had no obvious defects. Chase was so intent on his work that he didn't notice the look on Taub's face, a look reflecting the older doctor's knowledge of what any tox screens would probably show.

"Would you look at that!" Chase exclaimed, breaking into Taub's reverie. Taub looked at his colleague quizzically. "She was pregnant," Chase stated. He shook his head. "That could be the reason she fell!"

Taub's heart caught in his throat. His guilt over the way he'd medicated Laura deepened considerably. A baby! His baby? It was certainly possible. He forced himself to ask in as calm a voice as he could muster, "How far along was she?" He couldn't ask whether the baby was alive. It couldn't have survived it's mother's death.

"I'd estimate three months. How long has her husband been gone?"

"He died four months ago," Taub replied.

"Do you know whether she was seeing anyone?" Chase asked.

Taub hesitated. "No." He wondered if he could trust Chase with his secret. If he didn't tell someone, it would eat him up alive. It was already beginning to. "Chase," he said in almost a whisper, "Chase, the baby may have been mine."

Chase's expression was unfathomable. "You slept with her?"

Taub shook his head and swallowed hard. "Only twice. She was so young and beautiful." He rushed to add, "My wife can't find out about this!"

"And how do you suggest we keep it from her?" Chase asked.

"If we don't say anything about the baby..." Taub began.

"No. We have to include her pregnancy in the report." Chase was adamant. "Especially since it may be related to her fall or her death."

"Being pregnant may have caused her to faint and fall, but it wouldn't have led to the rest of her symptoms," Taub argued. "What difference will it make to your report whether she was three or four months pregnant? Don't you see? If you say four, everyone will assume it was her husband's child," he argued desperately. He could see that Chase wasn't convinced. "Chase, you have to help me save my marriage!" he pleaded. "If you could have done anything to save yours, wouldn't you?"

Chase could see how frantic his colleague was, and remembered how he'd felt when he wanted to keep his mistreatment of Dibala from Allison. Taub was right. What could it hurt if he said she was in her seventeenth or eighteenth week of pregnancy? At least they'd have the fact that she'd been pregnant in the record. "All right," he finally agreed. "I just hope to God that this doesn't come back and bite us in the end." Was he becoming used to taking expedient shortcuts?, he wondered.

Taub breathed a sigh of relief. It was enough he'd have to find a way to fudge the tox screen results, and he'd also have to tell Rachel that Laura was dead. He wasn't sure he could handle any more.

They finished the autopsy in silence, and Chase closed the incisions. It was something he'd become very experienced at. Then Chase went back to Diagnostics to report their initial findings while Taub took the samples for analysis.

When Taub joined them a little later he seemed more relaxed. He'd managed to 'lose' some of his samples and convince the lab techs to use previous samples from the patient for the more extensive analysis required as part of an autopsy. Samples they'd taken the day before he'd dosed Laura with the cobalt compound.

"There's nothing more we can do here today," Foreman announced. For once Thirteen agreed with him. They left but went their separate ways.

Chase wasn't too eager to go home to his empty apartment, but he was tired and knew he'd never get any sleep in the hospital dorms. So he left soon after Foreman and Thirteen.

Taub was also reluctant to go home. He still had to tell Rachel that her friend was gone. He wondered what would happen to the little boy, and how Rachel would deal with that separation. 'The sooner I do this, the sooner it'll be over', he told himself, and headed out. And busied somewhere in his heart was the fact that Laura was gone, along with his child.

–

"Chris! You look terrible!" Rachel greeted her husband when he arrived home.

"Not as bad as I feel," he said. "We lost her, Rachel."

"What?"

"Laura. She's...gone," he explained. Sort of. He found he couldn't look her in the eyes.

Rachel gasped, then held her balled fist to her mouth to stifle her cry.

"We did all we could to save her," Taub claimed.

"But what...how...?"

"We don't know."

"So what will happen to Davey?" she cried.

"I suppose there are relatives," he began. "Wasn't she heading back to them? Someplace in Pennsylvania?"

"Yes," Rachel replied. "I guess I'll have to call them. I probably should have done that before this." She seemed completely shaken. "Oh, Chris! This is so terrible! She was so young."

"She was pregnant." Might as well tell her that now, Taub thought. Act matter-of-fact, he told himself.

But it was one shock too many. "What? No, she couldn't be!"

"She must have just conceived before Gary died," Taub said, compounding his lies.

"Do you think that was why she fell off the ladder?" Rachel asked.

"It's highly possible."

"But why didn't she ever wake up? Why did she have to die?" Rachel was in tears, and her husband pulled her into his arms to comfort her. She was beginning to calm down when they heard the baby's cry from the bedroom.

Rachel willed herself together, then went in to tend to little Davey. When she took him out of the portacrib they'd set up near their bed, she held him tighter than she had in the past, stopping his crying temporarily.

"You poor little thing," she crooned as she put him on the bed and checked his bottom. He'd soaked through the diaper and sleeper he'd been wearing. "Chris!" she called, not even noticing that her husband had followed her into the room. "He's wet," she announced when she saw him.

Taub quickly retrieved a fresh Pamper and another sleeper, the first clothing he saw for the toddler, and brought them over to his wife.

"He's such a little sweetheart," she said as she deftly changed him. Davey's big brown eyes looked up at her with such trust.

"I'm sure Laura's family will take good care of him," Taub said. Every time he looked at the child, he was reminded of Laura. Davey had his mother's eyes.

Rachel was silent for a minute. "Laura was only going back home because her mother begged her to. She really didn't want to have anything to do with her family, but with Gary gone, she didn't have the resolve to tell her mother 'no'."

"Her mother raised Laura, and look how she turned out," Taub argued.

"Yeah. Dead." Rachel threatened to begin crying again. Only the little boy's needs kept her from doing so.

"So what do you think we should do?" Taub asked.

"I don't know. Maybe we don't have to tell her family about her death. Not just yet?" she pleaded.

"Rachel, they have to be told."

"I know," she said softly. Then with faux cheeriness she said to the baby, "C'mon, Davey. Let's get you something to eat." She picked him up again, and carried him to the kitchen.

Jars of toddler food had replaced the canned goods on one shelf in the cabinet over the kitchen counter and half of a shelf in the refrigerator.

"Yogo," Davey said as Rachel settled him in his booster seat at the kitchen table.

"Chris, there's some Yo-Baby in the refrigerator. Can you bring it over with a spoon?"

Taub did as he was asked, all the while watching his wife with Davey and marveling at how good she was with the child. She fed him the yogurt and watched as, in-between spoonfuls, he ate the pieces of cheese and crackers she'd placed on his tray. But when he was finished eating, Davey held out his chubby arms to Taub, saying, "Kiss, Kiss."

It took the doctor a minute to realize the baby couldn't say his name. The best he could do was 'Kiss'. Taub smiled as he lifted Davey out of the seat. Rachel hurried over with a wet cloth to clean the baby's face and hands, afraid he'd get her husband all sticky.

_What a cute kid._ Taub had grown quite fond of Davey, but his smile quickly faded as he watched his wife fuss over the toddler.

_I hope to God that Rachel can let Davey go, because there's no way in hell we can keep him._

 

### Chapter 4.

"Where's Taub?" House asked the rest of his team when he arrived at the hospital the next morning.

Chase shrugged, and Foreman and Thirteen looked blank. But just then Taub walked in, holding the results of the lab tests from the autopsy.

"Anything?" Foreman asked him.

Taub shook his head. "Everything was within normal ranges, no different than before she died. No signs of infection or toxins in her system." He tried not to show the relief he felt.

"Pregnancy alone couldn't have caused her death," Thirteen speculated.

"Do we know how far along she was?" House asked, as if it mattered.

Chase glanced at Taub before answering. "I estimated about four months."

"Did you analyze any samples from the fetus?" House asked Taub.

It was Taub's turn to glance at Chase before he shook his head. "We didn't touch the baby."

House grimaced, but he wasn't really annoyed that they hadn't examined the fetus. Still, he sensed that Chase and Taub weren't telling him something. How could he make a diagnosis if he didn't have all the facts?

"It's time to move on." House tossed a file folder to each member of his team as if dealing a deck of cards. "We've got a new patient, courtesy of Dr. Cuddy." He picked up a marker and stood poised at the whiteboard. "Taub, you're up first."

House listened half-heartedly as the DDx began. He couldn't get Laura Musgrove out of his mind.

Even though the new case turned out to be simpler than they first thought, their patient crashed twice during the four days it took the team to finally arrive at the correct diagnosis. Foreman and Thirteen bickered constantly, Taub was so distracted by his home life he was next to useless, and Chase was hung-over half the time. The only one working at full-speed was House.

The moment their patient was well enough to be transferred out of the ICU, House began wondering about the Musgrove case again.

The next day, unable to shake the feeling that Chase and Taub were keeping something from him, he resolved to get them to talk. He knew Chase, and his buttons, the longest and best, so he decided to start with the young Aussie.

He cornered Chase as he was leaving the OR that morning. "We need to talk," he said enigmatically.

Chase was tired, his scrubs were covered in blood and, although the operation had been successful, he knew the patient would have a long road to recovery. "Not now, House," he said, trying to walk past him.

"Better now than when you're stinking drunk," House said. "You know drinking never solves anything, don't you?"

Chase forced a laugh. "That's rich coming from you. Sort of the pot judging the kettle, wouldn't you say?"

"What are you trying to forget? Daddy dearest?" House waited for a reaction but none came. "The whole Dibala thing?" House saw a flicker in Chase's eyes, but he wasn't through. "Cameron? Or is it something to do with Laura Musgrove? Probably all of the above."

"Shut up!" Chase shouted, and walked away. He didn't see the half smile on House's face. Bingo!

Before House searched out Taub, he headed to Cuddy's office. As usual, the administrator was on the phone, probably with a donor, but House was willing to wait. When she finally acknowledged his presence, she wasn't smiling at him.

"Did we ship off Laura Musgrove's body yet?" he asked, knowing the suddenness of the question would probably take her off guard.

"Her family can't decide what to do," she said. "House, your team already did an autopsy, without anyone's permission, I might add. Now what are you up to?"

"I want to check the amniotic fluid," he said.

"After all this time? You can't be serious!"

"Yeah, well, what can it harm if I try?" he countered.

Her frown intensified. "No."

"You're saying 'no'? After you let me do an autopsy on a living child, dissect the brains of, Lord knows, how many patients, even looked the other way when I've used off-label drugs on my patients. Since when do I have to play by the rules?" he argued.

She bit the inside of her lip as she listened. She knew she should have reined in House years ago, but the trouble was, his radical ideas saved lives. He was the most gifted doctor she had on her staff.

"OK," Cuddy sighed. Clamping down on House now, much as she wanted to, was an exercise in futility.

–

House left Cuddy's office with a triumphant smile on his face. He'd get to the amnio later, it could wait. If it was going to show anything at all, an hour or two wouldn't matter.

He found Taub sitting in the conference room staring at the blank white board, maybe waiting for some symptoms to magically appear. Taub didn't even look towards the door when House entered.

"We need to talk," House said. He'd used the same line on Chase earlier, but Taub didn't know that.

"We don't have anything to talk about," Taub replied. "We don't have a patient," he added, gesturing at the blank board.

"Yeah, well, it's about a former patient." House watched Taub's face. "You were as surprised as anyone that Laura was pregnant. Didn't she tell your wife?"

Taub just shook his head. He really didn't want to talk about this, but knew he couldn't really get out of it, not with House.

"I wonder why," House said.

"Maybe Laura didn't know," Taub speculated. She hadn't even told him, and he'd had a right to know.

"Highly unlikely," House countered. "Maybe it wasn't the husband's," he guessed.

House was getting a little too close to the truth for Taub's liking. He couldn't help blanching, but recovered pretty quickly. "Maybe she said something to Carol. Carol Sloan, the other woman who was there when she fell," he elaborated.

House nodded once. "Ask her," he ordered.

Taub was only too happy to call Carol. Anything to get out from under House's microscope. He checked the number, picked up the phone, and punched it in. "Carol, this is Chris Taub."

"Oh, Chris! I was so sorry to hear about Laura," she said. "Rachel told me you and the other doctors still don't know why she died."

Maybe it wasn't better to talk to Carol. "Um, did she also tell you that Laura was pregnant?" he asked, glancing at House who was hanging on his every word.

"Yes. Poor thing."

He wasn't sure whether she meant Laura or the baby. "Had she told you about it?" he asked.

"No! It was a total surprise," she said. "Do you think the pregnancy had anything to do with her fall, or even her death?"

"Possibly with the fall, yes, but unlikely with...with her death."

"Then what was it?" she demanded.

"I wish I knew," he said, because it was the only response he could give. "Well, take care, Carol. Bye." He hung up and turned to House. "Laura didn't tell her either."

House just nodded.

–

House decided it was time to head down to the morgue. With Cuddy's permission, he was determined to learn all he could from Laura's fetus. It could not survive once it's mother was dead, but it still held clues to her death. At least he hoped so.

I was standing waiting for the elevator, contemplating taking the stairs instead, when he joined me. I glanced at my watch. "It's not lunch time yet," I said, rather than ask where he was going. You have to phrase your questions carefully with House or else you won't get any answers.

"I'm off to fiddle with a fetus," he said with a maniacal grin.

I don't know which bothered me more, the statement or the facial expression, but I decided to play along. "Can I come watch?" I asked.

The question took him off guard, but then he smirked. "Oh-ho! Good one, Jimmy boy." The elevator arrived and we got on. "Sure, why not? I can use the help."

He led the way to the morgue and asked for the body of the Musgrove woman. I still didn't know what he was up to, but I was sure I'd find out soon. While we waited for the attendant to bring the corpse, House began searching for something.

"What are you looking for?" I asked.

"I should have stopped in Ob/Gyn," he said, pulling various syringes and needles from a drawer of supplies. "Oh, well, this will have to do." He put a few implements on a tray.

"House are you going to tell me what we're doing here?" I demanded.

"I thought it was obvious. Getting fetal samples."

"House!"

"Relax, Wilson," he said calmly. "Cuddy gave me the OK."

I narrowed my eyes at him, but the thought of helping him with this had suddenly become distasteful.

_I remembered suddenly what Cameron had said to me when I went to see her the night before she left Princeton. She was staying at one of those chain motels out on Route 1. I called her cellphone number and she agreed to see me._

"You don't have to leave PPTH," I told her, echoing her speech to me when I wanted to leave the hospital after Amber died. "Your job in the ER is still there, I'm sure Cuddy would want you to stay."

"I can't, Wilson," she said shaking her head. "I need to leave the hospital, maybe even New Jersey."

Her laptop was open on the teakwood dresser that doubled as a desk, and I guessed she was revising her resume and looking for another position,

"There's an opening for an immunologist at a children's hospital in Albany. It sounds like a perfect fit," she told me, confirming my guess. "I may not be able to get any recommendations from PPTH, of course. Certainly not from House."

"I'll write you one," I offered.

She smiled at me wryly. "Thanks. I may just take you up on that."

"I really thought you'd never actually leave House," I said.

"I can't stay and let him corrupt me the way he has Chase and everyone else." She was adamant about it and yet I sensed she was trying not to cry.

"Do you think he's corrupted me?" I wondered aloud.

"I...I think he needs your friendship and you need his, but I also think that if you weren't so close to him, you'd be an even better person," she said. She put a hand on my shoulder. "Take care, Wilson."

I had never considered how being House's friend might have damaged me. But now watching House prepare to desecrate this poor woman's body, I knew I had to draw the line. I knew I couldn't stop him, convince him to change his mind. But I could turn on my heels and leave, prove to myself at least that he hadn't corrupted me, and that's just what I did.

House didn't seem to notice.

 

### Chapter 5.

Later House told me, even though I didn't want to hear it, that his efforts were for naught. The amniotic fluid had already begun to deteriorate, and the fetal cells hadn't matured enough to tell him anything that might help solve the mystery of Laura Musgrove's death.

"That is strange after four months gestation," he mused, before dropping the subject entirely. He had more immediate things to think about. "I wanted talk to you about Cuddy."

House and Cuddy. Now that's an unusual relationship. They're both friends and adversaries, and they've fought for years. But lately their battle seemed to be escalating in intensity. Verbal jousts, once witty, were now biting and cruel, and their childish pranks had become downright malicious.

Cuddy liked to flaunt her authority over House, and for her latest salvo, she'd saddled him with two new patients at once. The fact that the cases didn't seem complex annoyed House more than being forced to divide his time, and his staff's, between the two. Of course, that was Cuddy's intent.

But the plan backfired when House was able to dismiss the first almost immediately as vasculitis, and move on to the other in short order.

On the surface, the second appeared to be simple, too, a case of endometriosis, complicated by the fact that the patient was anorexic. But House had a hunch that there was something else wrong.

"Cuddy did me a favor giving me this case, and she didn't even know it," he told me with a big grin. "One of the more intriguing cases we've had recently."

He worked the team hard on this one. Although they all were eager to solve the case, Taub in particular seemed driven to succeed. He didn't want to lose another patient.

Chase was still trying to assuage his conscience about Dibala. Even though he'd almost convinced himself that killing the dictator was a gift to humanity, the fact that the man died because of him still burdened him with guilt. And the fact that it led to the break-up of his marriage didn't help. So he was eager to cure this patient.

House and his team argued through several differentials, then ran test after test. Despite the fact that the treatment relieved the pelvic pain caused by the endo, the girl continued to weaken. Organs failed, and body fluids flowed from places that they weren't supposed to, and not from places they were.

Two contradictory symptoms remained constant: a high white blood cell count, and a failure to respond to any antibiotics or other medications they tried.

One afternoon, too tired to continue, House dropped into my office, unannounced as always. He interrupted an important phone call to a hospital in Dallas for a consult on a particularly difficult case.

"Not now, House," I said. "Go bother someone else."

"We're missing something," he said. "I know it's staring us right in the face, but damned if I know what it is."

"House, I'm on the phone."

He finally looked at me. "You're not saying anything. So, you must be hold," he stated.

Why did he have to be right? But I'd never admit that to him. He wouldn't leave until he had one of his epiphanies.

"Those phone sex people can be uppity, can't they?" he asked, indicating the receiver in my hand.

"I'm waiting for Dr. Leland Carter in Dallas, I'll have you know," I protested.

"Of course you are," he said. The name suddenly registered. "Leland Carter, isn't he the one who first used biopsies for treatment in addition to using them for diagnoses?" he asked rhetorically.

"He's consulting on Mrs. Barelli," I told him.

"That the one with the girls out to here?" he asked, holding his hands as far out from his chest as he could. And with his long arms, that was far.

I didn't even bother to roll my eyes. Finally, Carter came on the line. We talked for a few minutes about the patient. House acted bored, but I knew he was taking in every word. "Thanks, Carter. I'll let you know whether that works," I said into the phone and closed the connection.

"Done?" House asked, like a kid waiting, and not very patiently, for his turn for my attention.

"OK, House. What do you want now?" I asked, impatient myself.

"Well, you don't have to be snippy about it!"

"House, I don't have time for your games," I objected.

"You did when we...oh, ho," he grinned. "I get it. You have a hot date and you don't want to share."

"My only date is with a patient," I insisted.

"Yeah, I'm not surprised," he said.

"It's not that kind of date!" I shouted. I closed my eyes and counted to ten. And then to twenty. When I opened my eyes again, House was staring at me with an amused look on his face. Was he pleased that he'd once again gotten to me? "Cameron was right. You corrupt everyone around you. Well, I'm not stooping to your level. So, whatever you're planning to ask me to do, you can keep it to yourself. My answer is 'no'."

He grimaced, then nodded and left. My eyes narrowed involuntarily as I wondered what he was up to this time.

I didn't find out for a few days. I thought at first that he'd only come to my office in an effort to trigger a revelation about his patient. But it turned out that wasn't it at all. It never crossed my mind, but he was planning still another prank or two against Cuddy, despite the fact that he'd insisted she'd done him a favor by giving him two patients at once.

Still, as the days passed without incident, I did think about the fact that I never found out what he meant when he said "I want to talk to you about Cuddy." I'm glad I didn't agree to get involved in anything he planned.

I have to admit to a begrudging admiration for House's skill as a prankster. I'm amazed at his creativity.  
The few pranks I'd played on him, or on Cuddy, were child's play compared to his repertoire. But I don't think he anticipated the consequences of this one.

It didn't play out right away, so I was totally unaware of what he had done, but when I got an earful about it from Cuddy, I didn't know if she'd ever forgive him. Incensed, I went to his office to confront him. He was sitting at his desk, grinning like the cat that ate the canary, and tossing his oversized ball from hand to hand. "Don't you have a patient?" I demanded. "Do you really think you have time to play games while the woman's dying?"

"Newsflash: she's no longer dying," he said, shrugging nonchalantly. "She had an electrolyte imbalance, a vitamin deficiency, and a low grade infection, and some of the other common side effects of anorexia," he said. "Once we cleared up the endo, the problems were more noticeable. She's fine. Some meat and vegetables and large doses of vitamins did the job." He was so proud of himself. "I guess you've seen Cuddy's face!" he added, more excited by the results of his two-pronged attack on our boss than solving his medical puzzle. "It seemed pretty lame to me, but it worked out even better than I expected!"

I refused to give him the satisfaction of asking for all the gory details of what he'd done. It didn't matter. He made sure to tell me anyway.

"The hooker the agency sent over was perfect," he said gleefully. "She was so glad to be paid and not have to perform, that she was happy to do me any favor I wanted." That must have happened on one of those evenings when I was held up at the hospital.

"I told her about the witch who'd been hounding me and how it would be a big help if she called her the next evening at seven, said "Rachel's burning up!", and then hung up.

When Cuddy rushed out of the board meeting the previous Thursday, I should have known House was behind it. I wondered if she told him that it cost the hospital a million dollar donation. Cuddy told me she'd tried to call the nanny as she raced to her car, but there was no answer, making her even more anxious. It's a wonder she didn't cause an accident on her way home.

"And before she recovered from that one," House gloated, "I had the same woman call Lucas and leave a message, canceling Cuddy's appointment to go with him to look at another loft. She never knew why he didn't show! I don't think she'll ever forgive him."

"How did you know they were going to look for another place?" I asked, knowing before the words were out of my mouth that I shouldn't.

"I heard them planning it," he revealed. "He told her she'd love it!"

"You idiot!" It was time someone called HIM that. "It wasn't a loft they were planning to look at, but engagement rings!"

"Oh," he said, not at all contritely.

"House, are you doing all this because deep down you're interested in Cuddy and jealous of her relationship with Lucas?" I asked. It certainly sounded like it to me.

"No," he said in a questioning tone of voice that convinced me he really had no romantic interest in Cuddy. He just liked to yank her chain, and he did it so well.

But one day the consequences of his actions would catch up with him. I hoped I wouldn't be around when that happened.

 

### Chapter 6.

House could never let go of an unsolved case, especially one as intriguing as Laura Musgrove's. He revisited it often over the next few months, over meals, between cases and even during some he relegated to his staff.

Actually, I don't think it was ever far from Taub's mind either. He obsessed over the case, and so did Chase on occasion.

Eventually, Laura's family requested that her body be shipped back to Latrobe for burial. But they didn't seem to want her little boy. When Family Services came to take him from Taub and his wife, Rachel asked, "What can we do to be considered for adoption or even fostering little Davey?"

They were referred to a website where they found forms and lists of documents they'd need to prove that they were fit adoptive parents.

Laura's death and their growing love for her son had brought the Taubs closer together. But even though they were happier than they'd been in months, that happiness did nothing to ease Chris Taub's conscience. He was still wracked with guilt over his affair with Laura and, unlike his wife, he wasn't convinced that adopting Davey would completely mend their tenuous relationship.

In March, six months after House had assembled his current team of Foreman, Chase, Taub and Thirteen, and five months after Laura's death, they caught a case that was to have dire consequences for all of them.

The patient was named Timothy March. He was a middle-aged man with persistent stomach pains. They ruled out ulcers and IBS right away, and then set out to find the less obvious cause of the man's distress.

Blood and urine tests ruled out an infection. Besides, he didn't have a fever, and his white blood cell count was normal.

"When are you ever going to get any results?" the man's wife, Edith, demanded. "You've been poking and prodding Tim for the last six hours and what do you have to show for it? Nothing!"

"We're doing the best we can, Mrs. March," Taub began, trying to placate the distraught woman. "We _do_ know what he doesn't have, an infection or a fever."

"But look at him! He's getting worse," she cried.

The sound of the ICU door sliding open distracted her momentarily. "You're right."

"Who are you?" she asked, sizing up the man walking towards her.

"He's our boss, Dr. House," Taub interjected.

"You didn't happen to poison your husband by any chance, did you?" House asked, staring at her with his penetrating blue eyes.

"I _beg_ your pardon!" she said indignantly. "Why would I do that?"

"Insurance, revenge, there are lots of reasons why people try to off their spouses," he replied nonchalantly, watching her pale at his ridiculous accusation. "But don't mind me. It's just a routine question." And with that, he nodded and left the room.

\--

Within a day, Tim was close to death and House seriously began to consider whether his half-hearted allegation against the wife could possibly be true.

House was never one to spend time with his patients. It was a task he happily delegated to his team. But acting on his hunch, he began to check in on Tim March on an hourly basis just to observe his wife. With each visit, she seemed increasingly nervous. She never spoke to House and often excused herself from the room the moment he appeared.

He ordered his team to run a tox screen focused on known poisons. They all looked at him as if he was crazy, but Taub suddenly had a very bad feeling. House was on to something, or someone.

Taub knew this time around that cyanide wasn't the culprit, and he also had seen in the past the intuitive leaps House was capable of. If the tests proved that their patient was poisoned, House could easily connect that to the Laura Musgrove case. He'd carefully weigh all scenarios. Was she poisoned? Had someone _thought_ she was, and treated her accordingly?

Taub knew every path would lead House to him.

The tox screen came back, just as House suspected, there was enough arsenic in the man's system to kill a half dozen people.

"Are you going to report this to the police?" Taub asked his boss.

"Is there a reason I shouldn't?" House replied.

"No, no," Taub said a little too quickly. But he hoped, when the other shoe dropped and House realized what he'd done, House wouldn't turn him into the authorities.

"I'll let the coppers prove that his wife was the one trying to do him in," House said in a fake British accent.

The antidote for arsenic poisoning is Dimercaprol, a chelating agent just like the compound Taub used to treat Laura for cyanide poisoning, but it has different side effects, including increased blood pressure. House wagered the man would rather deal with high blood pressure than die a horrible death from organ failure.

Taub watched House carefully over the next few days. If House had made the connection to Laura's death, he didn't let on. Instead he joked about what the current patient might have done to incense his wife enough that she'd resort to killing him.

And once the man had been released, and his wife arrested by the police for attempted murder, House turned his attention not to Taub, but to Chase.

"So you killed another one," he said one day when he and Chase were alone in the conference room.

The Aussie looked at House as if he was daft. "What are you talking about?"

"It's OK. You can tell me. You thought she was poisoned and you treated her accordingly," House went on, shrugging slightly. "I probably would have done the same thing."

"House, _who_ on Earth are you talking about?" Chase was at a loss.

"Taub's neighbor," House replied.

"I didn't..." Chase objected. "Why would I think she was poisoned? True, some of her symptoms pointed to cyanide, but there was too much against it. And I never would have done anything without proving it first."

"Then who pumped her full of a chelating agent?" House asked.

"You think that's what happened?" Chase probed.

"It fits. There was no cyanide, and the agent, probably some cobalt complex, bound with the wrong thing, killing her."

Chase took a moment to think through what he knew about the woman's death, and register that House had a point, before he spoke. "I think you're right," he said with something akin to awe. Why hadn't it shown up in the autopsy he did? He suddenly remembered that it was Taub who had the samples analyzed.

House replied with the barest of nods. "So if it wasn't you...Taub did the autopsy with you, didn't he?" House remembered too.

"You know he did," Chase answered.

"Anything I should know about that?"

Chase's hesitation gave him away. "He did the post-mortem analyses. And he also asked me to say that the pregnancy was at four months instead of the three I first estimated." Chase was never one to protect someone else at his own expense.

Of course, Chase's information got House wondering why Taub would do that. It wasn't long before he reached the only logical conclusion. The baby wasn't Laura's husband's, but Taub's.

But House didn't know what to do with his newfound insight. He was perplexed. He should have been satisfied knowing what finally killed Laura Musgrove, but he wasn't. There were still too many unanswered questions plaguing his mind.

_Why did she fall in the first place? Did the pregnancy make her dizzy? There's no way we can ever be sure. Too much time had passed. _

Why didn't she ever wake up from her coma?

And Taub...who knows what he was thinking. Why was he so sure Laura had been poisoned? What was he trying to hide? Who was he trying to protect?

House decided he needed some time to think. He filed the case away in a corner of his mind, knowing he'd come back to it soon.

 

\--

During the months after Laura's death, the ice between Foreman and Thirteen began to thaw. They hadn't yet resumed their previous relationship, but it took too much energy for each of them to keep up the bickering and sniping.

Occasionally, I saw Foreman watching his former girlfriend. I wondered if he was monitoring her for the deterioration in her health that was sure to occur given enough time. Or was he just curious about whether she still had any feelings for him? There was no way to know for sure.

I saw House, too, watching both of them. Was he plotting to bring them together or to drive them further apart? What was in it for him? I didn't have a clue.

\--

 

Meanwhile, Family Services was having a hard time placing little Davey Musgrove. So many people wanted infants, but the child was now twenty months old, and nobody wanted a toddler approaching the terrible twos. One foster home had taken him, but he cried all the time, asking for his mother, and for Chris and Rachel Taub. A month later he was placed in a home that really had too many kids for any of them to get individual attention. Davey continue to cry. He refused to do what he was told, refused to eat, to go to sleep when the other kids did, to play with any of them.

He wasn't the only one who cried a lot. Rachel would go on frequent jags, sobbing for no apparent reason, but her husband knew it was because she missed the little boy.

"We have to get Davey back!" she told her husband.

"We've been trying everything we can," Taub pointed out. The Taubs were older than most adoptive parents, and the agencies were reluctant to consider them.

But when it became apparent that they were the only ones who really wanted Davey, calling weekly for an update on their application, asking to send him clothing and toys, Family Service finally allowed them to foster him, and told them they might be able to adopt him if they passed a six month probation.

The morning after they learned that, Taub arrived at the hospital in an elated mood, and House shifted his attention to the shortest member of his team. "Guess Rachel finally put out again," he said.

But Taub couldn't be baited. "They've approved us to foster Davey Musgrove," he announced.

"That's as good a reason as any for your wife to..." House began.

"Shut up, House," Taub shouted. "You can't stand to see me happy, can you?"

House seemed to be thinking that over as he worked air around his mouth. Was Taub right? He knew he'd lost some of the desire to be kinder to people that his stay at Mayfield had instilled in him, but he thought he'd been at least a _little_ bit nicer. He couldn't help but wonder what Cameron would say.

"You and Rachel really like that kid?" he asked incredulously.

"He's great," Taub replied. He had never been as happy about his marriage as he was when he and Rachel were sharing the responsibility for the little boy. Sure he still had qualms about his affair with Laura and his part in her death, but the result was better than he could have imagined.

House tried a few more times to needle him, but Taub was unshakable, so my friend turned his attention to Chase. The young man was pulling himself out of the drunken doldrums that had plagued him since Cameron left. He'd probably always carry the wound from that loss, but it was beginning to scab over, and he could ignore it most of the time.

Unfortunately, House would never let him forget about Cameron. I'd always thought House had a tender spot for the Australian, or at least as tender a spot as he could manage. But that didn't stop him from picking at the scab so it would never heal completely.

"Have you filed for divorce yet?" he asked Chase about seven months after Cameron left.

"On what grounds?" Chase challenged.

"Abandonment, mental cruelty, maybe judgmentalism, if there is such a word."

The truth was, Chase hadn't heard from his wife for a few months. She'd emailed him once to say she'd gotten a job, but not where, and then again to wish him a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. He'd sent her an e-card for her birthday, but never heard from her that she'd received it. It was as if she'd already divorced herself from him and her life in New Jersey. And he'd convinced himself it was fine with him.

But a week later, House brought Cameron up again. Chase wondered whether House was having as much of a problem forgetting her as he was. His boss certainly couldn't let the idea of her go.

"You're better off without her," House told him. But who was he trying to convince, Chase or himself?

"You think being alone is the only way to live?" Chase asked. "I know you don't value happiness."

"And you don't need someone who holds you to impossibly high standards to be happy," House countered.

"You're saying that, without her, I'm free to ignore my conscience, that she was the only one keeping me from, well, becoming you?" Chase asked rhetorically. "Well, that's never going to happen. Unlike Foreman, I'm quite capable of cherry-picking which of your character flaws to emulate. You know, Cameron always over-estimated your power over people. I think you do, too. I'm my own man, House. I won't turn into you."

And for once, House couldn't think of a single word to say.

 

 

### Chapter 7.

Davey had changed a lot in the time he was away from Taub and his wife. The day he returned to their home should have been filled with happy expectations, but by then Davey had become a difficult, angry child. He was happy to see Rachel and Chris, but it didn't take long for his demanding nature, his tendency to lash out, and his belligerence to become evident.

"Chris, what are we going to do?" Rachel asked one night about a week after he was back. They'd finally gotten him to sleep in the new toddler bed they'd bought for his room. "Whatever happened to Laura's sweet-tempered boy? He's already behaving as if he's a 'terrible two' and he's only twenty-one months old."

Taub couldn't say 'You wanted him, now you'll have to deal with it' because he'd wanted Davey back too, even though he continued to remind Taub of his mother. "Give him time to adjust," he advised, and hoped that time was all it would take.

House, of course, noticed that Taub was dead on his feet when he showed up each morning. "Rachel getting frisky again?" he asked. The team sat at the conference table reviewing the file on their latest patient.

Taub just shook his head. "Give it a rest, House." But then he felt the need to explain. "Davey was up most of the night. We took turns reading to him, and bringing him water."

"What's it like having him back with you?" Thirteen asked.

"We're glad to have him," Taub replied. "But he's having a hard time readjusting to living with us again."

"They should have left him with you in the first place," Foreman said, adding nothing useful to the discussion.

Thirteen gave him a dirty look before turning back to Taub, "Will you be able to adopt him?"

"Maybe," Taub said.

House, of course, was becoming bored with the conversation. "So, what have we got?" he asked to bring their attention back to the patient.

"The high white blood cell count points to an infection," Chase was quick to say.

"That was Cameron's line. Guess she rubbed off on you after all," House said.

"But that doesn't explain the rapid heart beat," Foreman offered.

"Or the lack of a fever," Thirteen said. "Unless he's been on a fever reducer." She began reviewing his medications.

"Is there a rash?" Taub asked, trying to clear the fog in his brain.

"There's nothing in the file," Thirteen replied, flipping through the pages.

"Go examine him and look for one," House told the short man.

Taub rose and went off without a word.

"Oh, good!" House said, rubbing his palms together. "Now we can talk about him."

The others ignored him, and continued to brain storm about what might be wrong with their patient. By the time Taub returned to report some petechaie on the patient's stomach, the white board was filled with suggestions. House added the rash and then erased those possibilities that weren't likely to lead to the intradermal leakage of blood.

–

It only took a day to diagnose the patient. Despite the studied mutual disregard that had replaced Foreman and Thirteen's former bickering, Chase's frequent bouts of zoning out, and Taub's family distractions, they were still a reasonably effective team. Not that House would ever tell them so.

But one morning, neither Foreman nor Hadley showed up.

"Guess they finally made up and decided to take a sex health day," House speculated.

"I don't think so," Taub said, shaking his head. "Foreman said something about a date with one of the nurses in NICU last night before he left."

"Are you sure it wasn't Thirteen who was dating the nurse?" House asked. He'd noticed Thirteen's attraction to the nurse even if the others didn't.

Chase pulled out his phone and called a number, but there didn't seem to be any response. "Foreman's not answering."

"Of course not!" House exclaimed. "Did you ever answer your phone when you were doing Cameron? Oh, wait. How stupid of me! She would have answered for you if you didn't."

But just then the door opened and Foreman walked in looking like death warmed over. His right eye was bloodshot and he had a small bandage on the cheek below it.

"Where were you?" House demanded. "What happened to you?"

"Don't ever date a nurse who's also a black belt in karate!" he said.

He was followed by Thirteen who seemed to be taking great joy in Foreman's condition. "If it wasn't for me, you'd be in worse shape," she taunted her former boyfriend.

"Thanks!" Foreman said, but didn't sound grateful. "I could have handled her!"

"Right!" she said. "Lucky for you I was at the same bar as you and Sheila. I should have let her have her way with you."

"Why didn't you?" House asked.

"Good question!" the disgusted young woman said, sitting down as far away from Foreman as she could get.

But House wouldn't let it go. "So she came on to you? And you tried to fend her off? And she's a martial arts expert? You sure know how to pick 'em."

Foreman just glared back at him.

"Remind me never to send you to deal with a woman," House said with a sneer. "Why, the midget here probably could've done better!"

Now Taub glared at him.

"Thirteen's my go-to guy from now on!" House decided.

The only female member of his team began to glare too.

"What, you're not going to say anything about me?" Chase asked. "I think I'm insulted!"

Cuddy strode in with a file held tightly in her two hands and looked around at all the angry faces, then turned to House. "What did you do this time?" she asked.

House ignored her question and reached for the file. "Gimme!" he demanded. "This better be good."

The bantering and trading of insults that had been a hallmark of the relationship between House and Cuddy had seen better days. Lately they barely spoke, and when they did, they acted like strangers. Maybe one prank too many. I wasn't even sure who'd pulled the last one.

House opened the folder and read quickly, looking for clues, but none seemed obvious. Ignoring Cuddy, he began barking orders. "Go do a d-Dimer," he told Foreman. "You're safe, the patient's male." Then as Foreman was about to leave he added, "Thirteen, you'd better go with him. You never know."

Seeing that House was engaged in the case, Cuddy turned on her three-inch heels and left.

Thirteen reached for the file, but he held it out of her reach. "Uh-uh. Mine."

"How are we supposed to know what to look for without the file?" she demanded, folding her arms across her chest, reminding him of Cameron.

He grimaced. "You have a point." He removed one sheet from the folder and handed it to her. "That should do it," he said.

She sneered but took what he gave her and left.

House turned to the remaining members of the team. "OK, we've got blood clots, abdominal pain and vomiting, and decreased urine output."

"You're thinking DIC," Chase said. He knew how to connect the clues House was tossing out.

Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation is a complex acute condition that can arise from a variety of situations including some surgical procedures, septic shock, poisonous snake bites, liver disease, and postpartum (obviously not the case this time). With DIC, clotting factors are activated and then used up throughout the body. This creates numerous minute blood clots and at the same time leaves the patient vulnerable to excessive bleeding.

"Maybe," House replied, squinting at the file. "What do you make of this?" he asked, pulling out another sheet. It was the results from blood tests and showed high levels of fats and lipids.

Chase and Taub gathered around to look at the numbers. "Those levels could cause a false positive on the test Foreman's doing," Taub pointed out.

"How long ago were those tests done?" Chase asked, looking for a date and time stamp. "If the high levels were only temporary, they may be back to normal by now."

"Could be," House said. He obviously had some ideas but wasn't giving them away. "Let's see what the d-Dimer shows."

"I'll go test the blood lipid content again." Chase said, leaving House alone with Taub.

"Meantime, what do you want me to do?" Taub asked.

"Now would be as good a time as any for you to tell me why you thought Laura Musgrove was poisoned," House said, out of the blue. He figured it was the only way to catch Taub off-guard.

Taub looked down at the floor, trying to retain his composure. He knew this day would come. He just didn't know how to reply. He took a deep breath and let it out before looking back up at House. There was no use denying what he'd done. But he had to make House understand why.

"Cyanide fit the symptoms," he said. "I know I should have confirmed before treating her, but she was dying anyway. I didn't think we had the time."

Taub's confession of his medical error proved to House he was guilty of something much worse. The puzzle of Laura's death was solved except for some details. House decided to let things go, temporarily.

Foreman had returned to Diagnostics and announced the d-Dimer test was positive. He stated they might need additional tests to confirm, but at least they now had something to go on. Chase was right behind him. "Fats and lipids are close to normal again."

Belatedly, Hadley returned too. "I've ordered anticoagulants for the patient," she said.

"Without additional tests?" Chase asked.

"He's already had clots," she argued, waving the sheet House had given her. "The meds can't hurt."

"Now we just have to figure out what's caused them, Deep Vein Thrombosis or a Pulmonary Embolism," Foreman stated. In DVT, a blood clot forms in a vein that is deep inside the body, PE is a blockage of the main artery of the lung.

"Or maybe it's VTE," Hadley added. "A venous thromboembolism."

"Or DIC," Taub insisted, remembering what Chase had said earlier. It was apparent neither Foreman nor Hadley had thought of that.

"So, we'll need additional tests. Your turn, Chase," House said. He'd written the teams guesses on the board and was studying them. "Do a chest MRI and ultrasound his legs. The risks associated with a misdiagnosis of PE are typically more severe than those associated with a misdiagnosis of DVT."

"What about a lung ventilation/perfusion scan?" Chase asked before he left.

House nodded. "Yeah. That too. Let's see where the clots are and how compromised his lungs are."

"I'll give you a hand," Taub told Chase, but House had other ideas.

"Foreman, you go with Chase. I need Taub for something else."

Once the two doctors left, Taub asked, "What now, House?" He was very much aware that Thirteen was still in the room, and hoped House wouldn't ask any more about Laura Musgrove.

"Time to check out the guy's home," House said. "I doubt anything environmental is involved, but you can't be too sure."

Taub nodded, feeling a little relieved. "I'll need an address."

"What, you don't want his keys?"

"House, the address!" Taub insisted.

House gave it to him and he was on his way.

"What about me?" Thirteen asked.

"Talk to the family. See if he's had symptoms before," House instructed.

She shook her head. "There's no one here, no family, no friends. No one to ask."

House worked his mouth, then opened the file again. There was a family doctor listed, and a woman as next-of-kin. He gave Hadley the information. "Call them. See what you can get."

"OK," she agreed, and went to make some calls.

House watched her go, pondering what else they could do at this point. Satisfied that he had everything covered, he decided it was time to bother me.

For once I wasn't busy with a patient. In fact, I almost welcomed his visit. There was something I had to ask him.

"Have you heard anything from Cameron?"

I think he considered pretending that he didn't know who Cameron was, but decided against it. "Why aren't you asking her husband that?" he countered instead.

"I already did," I replied.

"Why do you want to know?"

"Because I wanted to ask her opinion on something," I admitted.

"Won't I do?" he pouted. "I thought I was your BFF, not Cameron."

Was he insulted? He must have realized that it had to be something that wasn't in his narrow realm of expertise. I certainly didn't think he was up to giving romantic advice. No, I really needed to talk to someone as understanding as Allison Cameron. He gave me a sour look and left.

House met Thirteen as he returned to his office. She reported that the doctor listed had retired more than a year before, and she was trying to locate someone who had access to his records. The woman listed as 'next of kin' turned out to be his sister, who hadn't spoken to the patient for three years.

"Damn," House muttered. "Another dead end."

 

### Chapter 8.

Rachel Taub was still struggling with little Davey. Sometimes she found herself conceding to his every demand just to get a little peace, but deep down she knew that wasn't the way to handle him. She looked forward to seeing her husband come home each evening so she could turn over the burden to him.

But more often than not, Taub arrived tired and irritable after a day of trying desperately to diagnose a patient, and at the same time maintain his defenses against House's continued probing. He didn't have any patience with the boy. He'd shout at him to be quiet, or punish him severely for the slightest misdeed. It was just one more thing for Taub to feel guilty about.

The evening after he'd been sent to the blood-clot patient's home to look for who-knew-what, and of course didn't find it, he was in an especially cranky mood. Davey had enough teeth by then to eat the same dinner that Chris and Rachel ate. When Taub walked in he was sitting at the kitchen table in his toddler seat, banging his fork on the tray in front of him.

But when Rachel brought her husband and Davey plates of meat loaf, green beans and potatoes, the little boy began to shake his head, yelling 'No! No!', and banging harder. She tried breaking up the food so that Davey would have an easier time eating it, but he continued shouting.

Taub had had enough. "This is dinner," he told Davey. "Either you eat it, or you go to bed hungry."

That shut Davey up temporarily, but he was cutting two more teeth, one on either side of his little mouth, and eating even the soft meat and potatoes was painful. Still, he tried, but "Hurts!" he cried after each mouthful.

"You think that hurts!" Taub threatened angrily.

Rachel put a hand on his arm. "Chris, he's teething."

"That doesn't mean he can get away with this kind of behavior," Taub said, staring at the boy.

Rachel glared at him. "How can you be so mean to this defenseless baby?"

"He's not a baby. Next you'll be playing the orphan card." Taub's fork fell to his plate with a clatter and he stormed out of the kitchen.

Rachel called after him, "Where are you going?"

"I don't know, but I can't stay here!"

She winced as she heard the front door slam. But Davey was looking at her with fright, so she went to him. "It's not your fault, Sweetie!" she told him. "C'mon, let's see if we can find something to help your mouth feel a little better."

Taub got into his late model BMW and started to drive. He had no idea where he was going, only that he was fed up. But before long his hunger directed him to a nearby bar and grill. He found a parking space in the small gravel lot next to the place. When he walked through the door, he found the dark and slightly shabby ambiance comforting in a way.

He sat down at an empty small table on one side of the room. Soon a scantily clad waitress came over to ask, "What'll it be?"

"A beer to start." Taub paused to admire her long shapely legs before saying, "Uh, what kind of food do you have here?"

"We have lamb stew tonight," she told him, popping the gum in her mouth. She had on too much make-up, but he could tell she was naturally very pretty. Her blond hair and lovely face reminded him of Laura Musgrove, but to avoid that painful thought, he decided that she looked even more like Allison Cameron.

"I'll have that, and keep the beers coming, OK?" he requested.

"Sure thing!" she said, smiling at him.

He was feeling better already. And two beers and a plateful of stew had made him mellower than he'd been in a few weeks. 'Why didn't I do this before?' he wondered.

Business was slow, since it was the middle of the week. The waitress was free to come back often to check on him. He knew she didn't reserve that smile just for him, but he was able to pretend she did. This was so much better than listening to Davey cry and Rachel whine about it.

He was so busy watching the waitress that he didn't notice the man who came in and slid into the seat opposite him. That is, not until he opened his mouth.

"Scouting your next mistress?" House asked.

"What are you doing here?" Taub responded, as the waitress stopped to see whether the newcomer wanted anything.

"Can't a guy stop off for a drink on his way home?" House countered. He looked up at the woman and ordered a beer.

"This isn't anywhere near your home," Taub pointed out. "And you left the hospital before I did."

"Hmmm." House pretended to consider that. "Saw your fancy car in the lot. Didn't think you wanted to drink alone."

"And what if I did?" Taub challenged.

House shrugged. His beer came and he drank it quickly.

"What really happened?" Taub asked.

"Your wife said you were out."

"You called my home."

"The patient took a turn for the worse. Need you back at the hospital."

"So you came looking for me?" Taub was a bit incredulous. House had the rest of the team to help him. And how did he really find Taub?

The waitress returned once more. "Will there be anything else?"

Taub had been considering dessert, but shook his head and she left the bill. Taub put his credit card on top of the black folder and asked House, "Couldn't the others handle it?" The waitress took the folder, her smile vanishing as she realized the newcomer was going to take this guy away.

Instead of replying, House just said, "Let's go. Time's a-wasting." He snagged a roll from the bread basket that came with Taub's dinner, and led the way out to the parking lot. His car was parked next to Taub's, confirming his claim that he spotted the BMW.

As he drove back to the hospital, Taub decided it was all for the best. It would delay his return home, and hopefully, both Rachel and Davey would be asleep when he finally got there.

The patient had more than deteriorated. For once House had understated the problem. They found Chase and Foreman scrambling to keep the man breathing and his heart going.

"He's crashed twice more while you were gone," Foreman told House. "Where'd you disappear to?"

"I went to get the leprechaun." House indicated Taub.

Taub rolled his eyes. "I'm not Irish."

"But you can work magic, can't you? Because that may be the only thing that'll save him," House replied.

"What are you talking about?" Maybe it was the beers, but Taub wasn't following his boss's logic.

"Take a look." House pointed his cane at the patient.

Taub studied the patient carefully, then moved closer. Suddenly his eyes went wide. "He's got a gastric adenocarcinoma. And DIC as a complication."

"How do you know that?" Chase asked.

"Did you smell his breath?" Taub countered.

Foreman looked accusingly at House. "You knew, but you had to bring Taub in to tell us?"

"Wasn't sure. Needed someone with a really GOOD nose to check it out." House explained.

Taub grimaced, then registered that someone was missing. "Where's Thirteen?"

"Does it matter?" House asked, wrinkling his forehead. "She has the smallest nose among us."

Taub ignored him. "Shouldn't she be here?" he asked Foreman.

"Don't know and don't care," the neurologist stated. "So, what do we do for Chester?"

"Who?" House asked.

"The patient," Chase reminded him.

"Oh." House shrugged. "Turn him over to Wilson. He's his problem now."

And that was how Chester Newton became one of my patients.

 

### Chapter 9.

Taub's diagnosis was dead on. But once the team had turned Chester over to me, they were free to go home for the night.

As Taub had hoped, Rachel was fast asleep when he crept into their bedroom. Taub noted there were no sounds coming from Davey's room, and assumed that the kid was sleeping too. Taub stripped off his suit pants and shirt. Too tired to bother to put on his pajamas, he slipped under the covers next to his warm wife.

Exhausted as he was, sleep was elusive. He knew things couldn't go on as they were, but he had no clue what he wanted to change.

He tossed and turned. Every idea he thought of was full of flaws.

_If I left House's team again, I'd miss the medical puzzles...   
I suppose I could leave Rachel, but that seems pretty drastic...   
Deep down, I know I still love her._

And so it went on throughout the night.

_Should we give Davey back? No, that wouldn't be right._

Despite the child's recent behavior, Taub was drawn to him, and had seen what happened to Davey when he was 'in the system', farmed out to people who didn't care about him.

_I could tell Rachel about my affair with Laura so I wouldn't have to worry about her finding out on her own. Tell Rachel about Laura? Have I lost my mind?_

Morning came finally. He must have drifted off, after all, because he woke to sunshine streaming through the gap in the bedroom drapes and the smell of coffee and breakfast wafting up from the kitchen. All of his worries from the night before seemed to have evaporated. He decided he'd just let things go on as they were.

In the light of day, he knew he could cope.

A half hour later he entered the kitchen, showered and dressed for work. "Good morning!" he sang out to Rachel. He patted Davey on the top of his head and asked, "Are you feeling better this morning?"

Davey removed the two fingers that were in his mouth and nodded. "Better, Chris!'' He'd finally learned to say Taub's name, making the doctor smile. Davey smiled back.

"I rubbed his gums with whiskey last night," Rachel explained as she dished out scrambled eggs with cheese melted in them. "That eased the pain and put him to sleep. I think at least one of the teeth came through during the night, so it's not hurting as much."

"About time," Taub said, smiling at her.

"Did House find you?"

"Yes. And a good thing too. I solved the case."

Rachel grinned at him. "That's great, Chris!"

–

Taub waltzed into Diagnostics with a grin on his face. Foreman frowned at him. Chase seemed to be lost in his own thoughts, but he roused himself to say, "You're in a good mood."

Taub's grin broadened. But then he looked closely at Foreman's face and said, "Your cheek looks even worse." The bruise was turning all sorts of colors, visible even on his dark skin.

"Thanks!" the neurologist said sarcastically.

"Guess we don't have a new patient," Taub said, noting the absence of their boss. Thirteen hadn't arrived yet, either.

Chase shook his head.

Hadley entered the conference room and Foreman's frown turned to a scowl. She smirked back.

"Where did you disappear to last night?" Taub asked her. He'd asked before but no one seemed to know or care. "We solved the case."

"What Taub means is HE solved it," Chase said, finally shedding his lethargy.

"What was it?" Thirteen asked. Even she wasn't answering Taub.

"Stomach cancer that resulted in DIC," Taub replied.

She nodded. "Guess that fit after all."

"You didn't answer Taub's question," Chase prompted. He was a bit curious, too.

"I had a date," she said. She seemed to be gloating. Foreman's scowl deepened. She looked directly at him. "You didn't know what you had when you had it," she said enigmatically.

Somehow Foreman realized that she didn't mean herself. "You were with Sheila?"

Thirteen just grinned.

Taub's eyes were wide, but Chase just rolled his. Now that he knew, he couldn't care less. He wasn't in the mood to discuss other people's relationships.

"So, what happened to the patient? Are we still treating him?" Thirteen asked.

"House sent him to Wilson," Taub told her. "And we're patient-less once again."

"I guess I'll see if they need me in the clinic," she said as she left.

House passed her in the doorway. He smiled at the satisfied look on her face. "At least SHE's getting some," he said, eliciting groans from Foreman and Chase. "And what's with you?" House asked Taub. He hadn't seen him this cheerful for weeks, maybe months.

"Nothing," Taub said, knowing House wouldn't understand the reasons for his good mood. "It's just a beautiful day."

 

"Just because you solved a case doesn't absolve you from killing a patient," House said, then continued on to his office, knowing he'd dropped a bomb.

Foreman stared at Taub. "What did he mean by that?"

"You think we're the only ones who ever caused the death of a patient?" Chase asked, rather than trying to explain. He wasn't sure himself, but assumed that it had been Taub who mistakenly treated Laura for poisoning.

Now it was Taub's turn to stare.

"But you killed two," Foreman replied to Chase with a smirk.

"OK. Why didn't I know about this?" Taub asked.

"For the same reason I didn't know about you. Who'd you kill?" Foreman demanded.

Taub thought it might be better after all for someone besides House to know about what he did. "Laura Musgrove," he admitted, looking down rather than at the other two doctors.

"You really did kill her?" Chase asked. "I thought you were just trying to hide the fact that she was having your child. But when House accused me of treating her for cyanide poisoned..." He didn't notice the look on Foreman's face as he took in all Chase was saying.

"I...I really thought it was cyanide," Taub said. "And I thought Rachel may have done it."

"Because you slept with Laura?" Chase asked.

"Wait, you did what?" Foreman finally blurted.

"So, who did you kill?" Taub asked, since he considered Foreman's question rhetorical.

Foreman eyes clouded over. He decided it couldn't hurt to tell him. "I treated a patient with radiation who didn't need it. It destroyed her immune system and allowed an infection to spread to her heart." His conscience didn't bother him as much as it had, but he'd never forget Lupe and his treatment of her based on a misdiagnosis of lymphomatoid granulomatosis.

Taub just nodded before turning to Chase. "And you? Foreman says two?"

"I don't want to talk about it," Chase said, glaring at Foreman rather than Taub.

Suddenly something clicked for Taub. "Did one of them have anything to do with why Cameron left you?"

"She said she'd forgive me, that she knew I believed I did the right thing," Chase said. "But I knew I'd disappointed her, failed her standards. And then House had to butt in."

Taub was still mystified about what he was referring to.

It was Foreman, once again, who spilled the beans. "The Dibala case, when you were gone."

"Yeah, I heard you treated him and he died."

Chase sighed. "I faked a test so we would treat him for the wrong thing. The man was a monster!" He was still trying to convince himself he'd done the right thing.

"Not too different from what I did," Taub said. "Except Laura deserved to live."

"What we all did. Taub, it happens," Foreman insisted. "Especially with the kind of cases we cover." He shrugged. "How often have we thought we knew what was wrong with a patient and treated them based on that initial misdiagnosis? Bound to be fatal sometimes." The nonchalance in his voice outwardly masked his continued guilt over Lupe's death.

"And you can live with that?" Chase asked, disgusted.

"I have to," Foreman replied.

"You really have turned into House," Chase said. "No conscience."

"I think we've all turned into him," Taub said.

The other two nodded slowly in agreement. Thoroughly depressed, the threesome sat in silence, wallowing in their respective guilt. It was time to let the conversation drop.

Some say confession is good for the soul, but instead of bringing the doctors closer together, their honesty seemed to separate them all the more.

–

As their day drew to a close, the team still didn't have a new patient. Thirteen never returned from the clinic, and the three men rose to leave.

"I'm going home," Taub said as he headed down to the lobby. This time he was looking forward to it. It was certainly becoming a more pleasant place than the hospital.

After Taub left them, Foreman asked Chase, "Wanna get a bite to eat?"

Chase had other ideas. "I was going to Reilly's."

"To drown your sorrows? I thought you'd given up drinking."

Chase sighed but didn't reply.

"Mind if I tag along?" Foreman had nowhere to go and no one to go with. Under happier circumstances, he might have accompanied Chase to be his designated driver, but tonight he needed a few drinks, too.

"Suit yourself," Chase replied with a shrug.

They entered the bar and stood at an empty high-top table. A waitress took their drink orders and quickly brought them back.

"So, are you going to tell me what else is bugging you?" Foreman asked.

"What makes you think something is?"

"Oh, cut the crap," Foreman grumbled impatiently. "You've been moping all day. I know something's wrong."

"I got the divorce papers from Allison before I left for work this morning." Chase couldn't understand why it was so hard to talk to Foreman. It wasn't as if his divorce was a secret.

"That's all?" Foreman asked. "You knew they were coming. At least Cameron didn't leave you for another woman."

"Hadley didn't leave you," Chase pointed out. "You fired her, and that put an end to your relationship. This thing with Sheila is an afterthought. Who knows how long it'll last."

"You know what I think?" Foreman countered aggressively. "Remy wasn't there the other night to protect me from Sheila. She wanted to steal Sheila away from me," Foreman said. He downed his scotch and stared at the tabletop as if it held the answer to all his problems.

 

 

### Chapter 10.

Taub was greeted with a big smile from Davey when he walked through the door. "Chris is home!" the little boy shouted. He was beginning to put words together into short sentences. Taub marveled at the changes he'd seen in him.

"I guess you're feeling better today," Taub said, tousling the boy's hair.

Davey nodded vigorously, "No more hurt." He pointed to his mouth.

"That's good."

Dinner that night was a far cry from the night before. Rachel described all the new things Davey was mastering while they ate their meatballs and spaghetti. He was able to put his blocks together to create a kind of tower, and he remembered all the colors Rachel taught him.

Taub offered to clean the boys messy face when they were through with dinner, and then played with him for a little while, delighted at how happy was again.

At eight, Rachel took Davey up for his bath and Taub collapsed on the sofa, feeling contented and relaxed. When she returned, Rachel sat down next to him and his arm automatically went around her shoulders.

"Chris, we received this letter today." She handed him an official-looking envelope. She'd waited until Davey was asleep before bringing it up. As Taub took the pages out to read, she summarized what they said. "We can put Laura's house on the market and sell off her things. The proceeds will go into a trust fund for Davey's education."

When Laura's husband died, she'd used his life insurance, and the death benefit and settlement from his company to pay off the mortgage. Upon her death, the house went to Davey, but it had taken this long to resolve the custodial and inheritance issues since Laura didn't leave a will.

"Carol and I were talking about going over there tomorrow to see if there's anything that Davey might want in the future, but then we'll call in someone who does estate sales," Rachel said.

Taub nodded. Maybe this would be the end to any chance that Rachel would find out about his affair. "Let me know if you need any help," he offered, kissing the side of her head.

"Thanks, Chris."

The next morning, as she'd arranged, Rachel met Carol at Laura's house. She brought Davey along with her, and some toys to keep him occupied while the two women went through the closets and drawers, looking for things like photographs and letters that Davey might want someday.

Rachel and Taub had moved all of Davey's furniture and belongings to their house after Laura died. His old room was empty, even the closet. He didn't seem to remember the place, although he made a beeline for the family room and the big screen TV. "Watch cartoons," he told Rachel, so she picked up the remote and turned on the set, quickly finding the Cartoon Network.

"Should we go through everything that was already packed?" Carol asked, looking around at the book boxes she'd been filling just before Laura fell from the ladder. The house was a sad reminder of how much she missed Laura.

"Let's wait until we've gone through her bedroom," Rachel suggested. She too mourned their friend.

"There are still some empty cartons that we can use to store anything you think Davey may want some day."  
Carol indicated a stack of flat U-haul cartons as they walked through the living room.

Rachel nodded her agreement. "Davey, honey, we'll be back soon, OK?" Rachel called to the boy.

He looked up at her briefly. "OK," then turned his attention back to the brightly-colored cartoon characters on the TV screen.

Laura's bedroom was just as she left it that fateful morning. The delicate floral comforter was spread across the queen-sized bed. Dust had settled on the night stands on either side of it, and on the dresser.

"What'll happen to the furniture?" Carol asked.

"I think it'll be put up for auction," Rachel replied, lifting a picture of Laura and Davey in a silver frame from one end of the dresser top. Davey was about six months old in it and he and his mother both looked so happy. On the other end of the dresser was Laura and Gary's wedding picture. Rachel took them both, then began opening drawers, shaking her head to quell the unbidden tears as she stared at Laura's clothes.

There was a matching chest of drawers next to the windows. "This is empty," Carol said, checking each of the drawers in turn.

"That was Gary's. Laura emptied it about a month after he died, and never used it for anything again," Rachel said. "I don't think Davey will want any of this furniture."

"It's all so sad!" Carol said. "I hope Davey will realize some day how lucky he was that you and Chris took him in." She moved on to the huge walk-in closet. Again, one side was virtually empty, while the other held Laura's clothes and shoes. "Laura had such excellent taste," she said, taking a navy blazer off a hanger and trying it on. It was a little tight on her. She slipped her hands into the pockets, empty except for a slip of paper in the right-hand one. She took it out and looked at it, just some numbers scrawled on a torn sheet.

"What did you find?" Rachel asked.

Carol shrugged. "It's a phone number I think." She held it out for her friend to see.

Rachel's eyes narrowed as she looked at it and immediately recognized what it was. "That's Chris's cell phone number. And his handwriting."

"Why would she have that?" Carol asked, a frown creasing her brow.

"Why indeed." Rachel knew she'd have to ask her husband about it that evening or else her imagination would take her to a place she dared not go.

–

Unaware of what was happening at Laura's house, Taub had joined the other members of House's team in a differential on their new patient. He seemed to be the only one of them who wasn't hung over (Chase and Foreman) or exhausted (Thirteen), but the others played along as best they could. As usual, there were several possible diagnoses, so he, Chase, Foreman and Thirteen were given their marching orders.

His assignment was to get a patient history, a task at which Thirteen had miserably failed when she questioned their previous patient. The only team member who was consistently able to wheedle information out of relatives in the past, besides House, had been Cameron. If Taub failed, House might have to do it himself, and his methods, while effective, weren't the kindest.

The patient's husband was wearing a path into the floor as he paced back and forth while the doctors poked and prodded his wife. "Mr. Fleming, what other illnesses did your wife have in the past six months?" Taub asked. He'd found more specific questions like that often elicited more information than asking 'what major illnesses has she had?'

"Uh, none," Fleming seemed surprised by the question.

"Where has she been?" Taub went on. "Did she leave the country?" He went through a series of questions with no luck. Either Karen Fleming had been in excellent health and never did anything remotely threatening to it, or her husband was lying. Defeated, he returned to the conference room to wait and see what his colleagues found out.

Just after House returned, Chase dragged himself in and dropped into a chair. His eyes were bloodshot and his shoulders slumped, but he clutched the results of the first blood tests. He read them out with little intonation. Nothing in the results was out of normal ranges.

"Off the wagon again?" House asked him.

"What's it to you?" Chase shot back.

House narrowed his eyes. "You heard from Cameron," he guessed. "You knew it was over. Now get your head out of your crotch and focus!"

Chase tossed the results onto the table and stormed out of the room.

"Where are you going? Did I say you could leave?" House shouted after him, knowing it was futile. He looked at Taub and the empty seats around the table. "Where are the others?"

"Still doing tests on Karen?" Taub guessed.

House grimaced. "OK. You got the last one alone. Whaddya think?"

Taub remembered something Foreman had once told him. 'It's never Lupus. Except when it is.' "I'd say Lupus."

The beginning of a smile flitted across House's face. "Not Lupus."

"The husband says she's never been out of the country. She's been perfectly healthy for the past few years."

"Then how could it be Lupus?"

Taub didn't have an answer for that. The team continued to run tests on the patient, all negative.

\--

Chase returned at four thirty, noting that only Taub and House were present. "Got some more blood work up. Anyone interested?" He stood in the doorway, determined to keep his distance from House.

"I'll bite," Taub offered. "What've you got?"

"The only thing that's out of normal range is the white blood cell count."

"High?" Taub guessed. "So it IS an infection."

"No, low," Chase said.

Taub listed every disease associated with a low white blood cell count, but very few also fit the patient's original symptoms, especially an enlarged liver. "Leishmaniasis," he decided was the most likely.

"Didn't you say earlier she hasn't been out of the country?" House asked, ignoring Chase for the moment.

"That's what the husband maintains," Taub said, then shrugged. "Everybody lies."

"Felty Syndrome is more likely," House said.

"She doesn't have rheumatoid arthritis," Chase pointed out.

"Which leaves Chediak-Higashi," Taub said. "But it's rare to live into your twenties with that."

House nodded. "Go get me some bone marrow," he said, rubbing his hands together and laughing maniacally.

"Which one of us?" Taub asked.

House studied the two men. "You. Chase still hasn't recovered from burying his head in a bottle last night."

 

### Chapter 11.

When Taub left to extract bone marrow, Chase finally replied to the dig from House. "My drinking isn't affecting my performance."

"No? Believe me, I know what a hangover feels like, and what it can do to your judgment."

Chase looked House in his bright blue eyes. "If you ever cared for Cameron, you'd feel the way I do right now."

"So you did hear from her," House said. He knew it!

"I received the divorce papers yesterday morning."

"And that's it? That's what's got you drinking until..." House decided not to go there. "You're not going to fight it?"

Chase shrugged. "What good would it do? You know Allison when she makes up her mind."

"So, you'd prefer to sulk and drown your sorrows. You know that's not the answer either. Unless it's a good single malt..." House trailed off. "Do you want to turn into your mother?"

Foreman chose that moment to make an appearance, looking even worse than Chase, and saving the young man from answering.

"And what's your excuse?" House asked him.

"Huh? I just came back to let you know her spleen's enlarged," Foreman said.

"He's upset that Thirteen dumped him for a woman," Chase answered House's question.

"You don't have to leave the country to get Leishmaniasis," House mused and his eyes lit up. He didn't acknowledge Chase's comment, but filed it away, along with the fact that Chase continued to tell on his playmates.

When Thirteen showed up to tell them about the presence of amastigotes in the patient's blood, confirming infection by a leishmania species, House smiled. "Kiddies, we have our diagnosis."

No one bothered to tell Taub, who ran the bone marrow test himself. They finally greeted him with the news when he returned much later with a negative report. "It would have been nice if someone told me," he said, but he just sighed. Business as usual. No harm, no foul.

"Did the husband say anything about a visit to Texas?" House prodded.

"I only asked about foreign travel," Taub replied.

"There've been cases of leishmaniasis as far north as southern Texas," Foreman said.

"Even a few in the northern part of the state," Chase supplied, proving his brain wasn't completely turned off.

"So that's it?" Taub asked. "Fine, then I can go home." He took off his lab coat as he left the room, looking forward to a pleasant night at home with Rachel and Davey. House had no more use for him, so he let him go.

–

When Taub arrived at the house, he realized right away that something was wrong. Rachel's greeting was cold and her eyes held the same hurt look he'd seen when she found out about his affair a few years before.

At least he'd get a happy welcome from Davey, he thought. But the child was fretful. "He's not cutting another tooth, is he?" Taub asked when Davey refused to respond to Taub's hug.

"He's had a stressful day," Rachel said. It sounded like she did, too. She turned back to the stove to dish out Taub's dinner and, once he sat down at the kitchen table, put the plate in front of him. Liver. His least favorite.

He felt as if he was being punished for something. He noticed that his wife wasn't eating. "Did you eat already?" he asked.

"I'm not very hungry," she replied.

"I hope you're not coming down with something," he told her, concern written all over his face. He dutifully cut into the meat on his plate. But as he chewed the first bite, he recalled that Rachel had planned to go through Laura's house with Carol that afternoon. Maybe that was why she was in such a bad mood. He still didn't know why she'd take it out on him.

Rachel waited until Davey was sound asleep to confront her husband. She walked over to where he was sitting on the couch and grabbed the remote from his hand, turned off the TV, and glared at him, her eyes almost black with anger.

"I take it you don't want me to watch the news," Taub stated calmly. "What's wrong?"

 

She reached into the pocket of her slacks and pulled out the scrap of paper. "Do you recognize this?" she asked, holding it out to him.

He knew the number written on the paper, of course. "It's my cell phone number. Where did you find it?" He had a sinking feeling that it was at Laura's.

"Carol found it in the pocket of Laura's favorite blazer," Rachel said as calmly as she could. She watched his eyes carefully. "What was Laura doing with your number? You wrote this, didn't you?"

Taub scrambled to come up with an explanation, but he couldn't look his wife in the eyes. "Maybe she asked for it in case of a medical emergency or something," he said lamely. It was plausible.

But Rachel wasn't buying it. She pressed her lips together and stared at him silently, daring him to explain further. There was nothing else he was willing to say. "Did she ever call you with an emergency?" Rachel challenged.

Taub knew he could lie and say she did, or just say he didn't remember, but his guilt had frozen his thought process. "No," he said softly.

Rachel sighed. "Oh, Chris! Don't tell me...no, I'm not going to even say it." She shook her head. Then a new thought joined the others racing through her head. "The baby! It was yours, wasn't it?" She didn't have to wait for an answer. The look on her husband's face said it all. "Of course it was!" she screamed. "You lying scum! You b@st@rd!"

Taub simply stood there. He knew he deserved the verbal pummeling Rachel delivered and accepted it without uttering a single word of protest. All he could say was, "Shhh! You'll wake Davey." He knew she didn't hear him.

She was taking this worse than the last time. Laura had been Rachel's friend. The fact that she was now dead, and that she'd been carrying Taub's child only compounded Rachel's pain. 'At least she doesn't know I killed her,' Taub thought. Or that he'd suspected her of poisening Laura. It was small comfort. His hope for a night of lovemaking was definitely out of the question.

Rachel finally ran out of expletives to call her husband. "I'm going to bed. There are clean sheets in the linen closet. Hope the couch isn't too uncomfortable. On second thought, I don't even care. I want you out of here in the morning, before Davey and I come down."

She walked up the stairs to the bedroom, and slammed the door as an exclamation point.

–

After his conversation with House that day, Chase began to question why he was so upset about the divorce papers from Cameron, but also why he hadn't even examined those papers to see what she was demanding. His gut tightened as he realized that she could take him to the cleaners.

When he arrived home, the first thing he did was to take them out and read through them. He should have known that she wasn't asking for much at all. He began to relax a little. But the finality represented by the papers still made him sad. He poured himself two fingers of whiskey, and sat on the couch to brood,

–

It was a while before I found out about the troubles in the Taub household, or about Chase's increasing dependence on booze. I was still fumbling my way into a relationship with a lovely young nurse I'd met when I had to visit a patient in the nursing home nearest the hospital.

Sally was a petite blond. She wasn't really my 'type'. She certainly didn't fit House's often-stated belief that I only fell for women who were needy. Sally was a caregiver, not a taker, and it was a refreshing change. But because of that, I found my usual approach didn't work. So I tried something new for a change. I treated her the way House treated women, and miraculously, it worked. I threw out inappropriate remarks and she just laughed. I took advantage of her caring nature and she just cared more. I decided that I didn't need Cameron's advice, after all, but I know now I should have talked to her. I should have realized Sally was too good to be true.

"Sally, I'd ask you to move in with me, but a friend of mine is sharing the loft," I told her after our fourth or fifth date.

"Oh, James. That's all right. Why don't you move into my place?" she offered.

"I...are you sure that's what you want?"

"I wouldn't ask otherwise," she replied, her eyes twinkling.

And then I had to explain to House why I was moving out. I'd kept him in the dark about Sally, so I expected it would come as a shock. But his reaction when I told him was an eye opener.

When I entered the loft, he was watching a soccer game he'd Tivo'd. An almost empty bowl of leftover spaghetti sat on his knee. He barely acknowledged my presence, so I went directly to my bedroom to pack a bag.

When I returned, the TV was off and he was sitting in the same spot, obviously waiting for me. "Took you long enough to convince her to let you move in," he said.

"You're angry."

"No," House said with a smile. "Now I can have the place all to myself. Well, me and my ladies of the evening."

I couldn't tell whether he was serious, or just having a little fun at my expense. Even after all these years I could never be certain. Sometimes I wondered if he even knew for sure himself.

 

"Just let me know when she's about to become Mrs. Wilson the fourth so I can move back to my place," he added, then turned the TV back on, dismissing me.

Well, I wasn't going to worry about him. It was time for me to pursue my own happiness. So I took my suitcase and drove to Sally's place, about a mile away.

–

Although I wasn't sure if House knew how bad things were becoming between Taub and his wife, he was certainly aware of the demons that were haunting Chase, and of the widening chasm between Thirteen and Foreman. He took all this as an invitation to taunt them all. And taunt them all he did.

He'd always delighted in making the miserable even more miserable, the hurt even more hurt, the disillusioned...well you get the picture.

Over the next week, he reached new heights in torment and mayhem. It went way beyond his scoffing at Kutner's superstitions or Big Love's religious beliefs.

"You're turning into me, you know," he told Foreman as they were leaving one evening. "Going home alone every night...it's your worst nightmare, isn't it?"

House left no doubt in Foreman's mind that he would live out his life in miserable solitude.

Chase was still brooding about the breakup of his marriage.

"You're better off alone," House reminded him every chance he got. "Who wants to live with a moral compass perched on their shoulder all the time? Cameron was always way too judgmental, a ball and chain. You should be glad she's divorcing you. It would have never worked out."

But when Chase was alone at night, he was haunted by his medical failures. He missed the comfort his wife had given him.

Taub began to show up for work in wrinkled shirts, bleary-eyed from lack of sleep. It didn't take long for House to ferret out that he'd moved into a hotel, as I had sometimes done when my marriages ended.

"You deserved what you got, you philandering dwarf!" House grumbled at Taub. "Rachel will never trust you again. You'll be alone for the rest of your life. Better get used to it!"

Even Thirteen got a lecture, especially after Sheila suddenly decided she was neither bi- nor lesbian and contacted an online matchmaking service to find the perfect guy.

"It won't be long before you die alone," House told her, and Thirteen accepted that, sensing her Huntington's symptoms getting worse and having no one to comfort her.

They say that hindsight is 20-20. Looking back, it's clear that the team made a serious tactical error by not standing up to House together. They could have even gone to Cuddy!

But, instead, they tried to fight him individually. One-on-one, they were no match for House. They bickered with each other constantly, and couldn't seem to solve a case, even when House gave them the answer.

The only thing they managed to do together was to kill another patient before House could intervene.

The Diagnostics Department was about to self-distruct.

 

 

### Chapter 12.

Things were going so well with Sally that I failed to recognize what was happening with House and his team. That is, until the board meeting when Daniels, the head of Cardiology, demanded once more that Cuddy fire House.

"I could see cutting him some slack when he was saving the lives of patients that no one else could diagnose, but how many has he lost this year?" the tall white-haired man demanded.

"Three, no four," Cuddy admitted. Despite her disputes with House, she still wanted to protect him. But she couldn't change the facts.

I hadn't been counting, but she was right.

"Four out of forty or so? That's too high a percentage," Daniels insisted.

The board members debated what to do, but for the time being, they decided to take Daniels' demand for House's dismissal under advisement.

The next day I went to tip off my friend. He dismissed my warning. He'd been threatened with firing before, and nothing ever came of it.

"This time they're serious, House," I told him. "If you lose another patient, it could be your last. If you're lucky, you might get away with an ethical reprimand attached to your file."

"Not gonna happen," he said with that attitude of self-assurance I always found grating.

"Because you say so?" I demanded. "You're delusional, House. You'd better clean up your act. I can't save you this time."

"Who asked you to?" he sneered defiantly.

There was nothing more to say.

Having failed with House, I sought out the members of his team.

\--

I found Chase in the locker room, sitting on a bench, his eyes closed, his hair disheveled. "Chase," I said quietly at first, but when I didn't get a response, a little louder. "Chase!"

His blood-shot eyes opened and tried to focus on me. "Go away," he slurred.

And I did. There was no way I'd ever get through to Chase now.

Next, I tried to talk to Taub. He was on the phone when I entered the conference room.

"Rachel, how many times do I have to tell you I'm sorry?" he was saying. I'd been through that myself, with my first two wives. She must have hung up on him because he suddenly looked at the phone and put it down. Then he noticed me. "What do you want?" he asked, taking his annoyance out on me.

"The board is threatening to fire House," I told him.

"That's all I need!" he said, placing both palms on his forehead. "And what do you expect me to do about it?" he demanded angrily.

"The team has to pull together," I said. "He's not taking the threat seriously. You can't lose another patient."

"I'm sorry, I can't help you Wilson," Taub paused, then explained. "House rarely listens to a word I say. Do you honestly think he'd take advice from me?"

I realized he was right. The only one who'd ever been able to get House to do the right thing was Cameron, and she wasn't coming back.

I left Taub stewing over his current situation, and went in search of Foreman. He'd been in charge of the team a few times in the past so I hoped he'd have a more responsible attitude toward the predicament they were facing, especially if House was fired.

I found the neurologist in the clinic. He'd just finished with a patient. "Got a few minutes, Foreman?" I asked.

He looked at his watch, then the crowd in the waiting room. "Five, tops," he replied. I was relieved that at least he was still acting like a doctor.

I told him what I'd told the others about the board meeting, but his answer surprised me.

"We've managed without House before," he said. "I don't think I did a bad job running the team."

Did he really believe that? "You're saying you think the team would be capable of killing patients with or without his help?" I asked to jolt his complacency.

He considered his reply, then motioned me out of earshot of the crowded waiting room. "Your friend has lost his share of patients. As long as we save more than we lose, we're doing well."

"So a fifty percent cure rate is your definition of success?" I challenged. I was appalled by his attitude. "I don't know why I bother," I said shaking my head. "You all deserve whatever happens to you."

I walked away before he could reply.

That left only one more team member. I doubted I'd be any more successful with Thirteen, but I had to try. I finally tracked her down in the cafeteria. She sat nursing a cup of coffee, or maybe it was tea. Was she avoiding her teammates?

"Hi," I said, taking the seat across from her.

She looked at me suspiciously. "What do you want?" she asked, just as Taub had.

"I just wanted to warn you about something," I said. "I've told House and the rest of the team already."

Her eyes narrowed. "WHAT did you tell them?"

"That the board is considering firing House," I said. "You're losing more patients, saving fewer. They've put up with his disregard of rules because he was a miracle worker, but now..."

"Frankly, I don't care," she said.

"Not you, too." I sighed.

"Wilson, I think you're probably the only one who does care at this point," Thirteen stated, and I realized she was right.

\--

It wasn't long before even I was distracted from House's situation. My relationship with Sally began to fall apart. At first I'd thought it was refreshing that she wasn't needy like most of the women I'd been involved with over the years. It was nice not to have to worry about her, provide comfort and support for a change. But then she turned out to be just the opposite of those other women; she smothered me with attention.

Rather than being needy, she wanted someone to need her. And she picked me. She was determined to take care of me, whether I needed it or not. I could never let on when I was unhappy. If I did, she'd be right in my face with "You poor baby!" or "What can I do?" I'm forty-two years old! I don't need a mother any more.

And she also didn't want me to need anyone else, or to do anything without her. The first time I tried was when House started up his weekly poker game again, and I told her I'd be very late getting home. She insisted on coming with me. Not that she was interested in playing. She just wanted to 'make you guys something good to eat instead of your usual junk snacks.' Now, that was going too far. And I certainly didn't need House throwing it in my face afterward, which of course he did.

I spent the next week trying to figure out how to break it off with her. Again, I was tempted to call Cameron for advice from a woman's perspective. But I figured she'd perceive it as an off-handed dig at her own caring ways.

In the end, Sally beat me to it. She dumped me for someone she considered even needier, although she claimed it was because I was spending too much of my time back at the loft with House. It was a blow to my ego, but at least she saved me the trouble of trying to let her down easy.

House was no help, of course. I was spending more time with him again, and it was a revelation. He was now more depressed than I'd ever seen him. He'd lost his spark.

But time passed and at least it seemed he was safe from the board's wrath after all.

It helped that he didn't lose any other patients for the rest of the year, although the patients he was given had conditions he and his team had diagnosed before. The challenge was gone along with the pleasure of solving new puzzles.

As the new year approached House came to a conclusion.

"I need a new team," he told me one evening as we sat in front of the big flat-screen TV in the loft living room. "My guys are no fun any more."

What he meant, I thought, was that they no longer responded to his heckling. He couldn't get a rise out of any of them, either because they each had problems of their own that occupied their thoughts, or because they'd heard it all from him before.

"They're totally off-track. I'm beginning to question my place in the universe," he went on. "I'm like a ship without a rudder."

"Or lacking a North star to guide you?" I prompted.

A commercial for one of the endless holiday movies had just ended. "Maybe I need Rudolf," he said. "Do you think it's allergies or a cold that gave him that red nose?" he mused.

"You need Cameron," I stated.

He looked at me as if I was a traitor, but then his head nodded slightly. "Maybe you're right." he muttered.

House was still staring at the phone when I went to bed.

I knew he wouldn't try to call her.

\--

House never followed through on disbanding his team. He was either too lazy or too complacent, probably both, to bother.

The next patient the team took on was a bit more puzzling. The woman had spontaneously gone into a coma without any obvious provocation.

It took them a day to determine she was pregnant and another to diagnose gestational diabetes, and that her coma was, in fact, a diabetic coma.

House's thoughts immediately connected to the Musgrove case.

"Could it have been that easy?" House asked Foreman, the only team member in the conference room at the time. "Is that why the Musgrove woman was unconscious?"

"You think Laura had gestational diabetes too?" Foreman countered.

"Did we ever test her?" House asked.

Foreman shook his head. "There was no history of diabetes, and we didn't know she was pregnant until long after she was dead."

The last piece of the puzzle had dropped into place for House, but it gave him no satisfaction.

_A diabetic coma. Why didn't I see this sooner?  
What's wrong with me? Am I losing my touch?_

He limped into his office and rifled through his desk, then returned with a dog-eared file which he tossed to Foreman.

"Is this what I think it is?" Foreman asked.

"Probably," he replied. "It's the Musgrove file. Finish up the paperwork, and return it to recordkeeping."

"Case closed?" Foreman probed.

House nodded. "You win some, you lose some."

An earlier diagnosis wouldn't have changed a thing. Laura Musgrove was doomed to die.

"Case closed."

 

 

### Epilogue.

House and his team treated other patients. They continued to save more than they lost, but they weren't a team anymore, and individually, they were miserable.

A couple of years later Thirteen's Huntington's suddenly worsened. She tried to hide it as long as she could but when her physical coordination and her concentration seriously failed her, she had to stop working. She refused to ask for help,

A month after she left PPTH, Taub and Chase confronted Foreman in the locker room

"What?" Foreman grumbled, retrieving his belongings before he left for the day.

"We wanted to talk to you," Chase began, "About Thirteen," Taub finished for him.

"What _about_ her?" Foreman asked indifferently.

Chase sighed. He did that a lot. "We think you should go to see her. She's all alone."

"And that would be my fault?" Foreman replied angrily. "I tried to get back together with her, remember? _She_ broke up with _me_!"

"Does that really matter anymore?" Taub asked quietly. "She's dying, Foreman."

"Don't you think I know that?" he slammed his locker door shut. "Look, I'm not interested in your advice. You've both done so well with your own love lives. Why would I listen to you?"

"We just thought..."

"Back off!" Foreman interrupted. "My love life is none of your business."

They didn't know whether he meant that he still loved her or not.

"And if you're so concerned about Remy's well-being," Foreman paused in the doorway, "then please, by all means, go see her yourself."

"Do you think we should?" Taub asked Chase, after Foreman had left.

"Should what?"

"Go see her."

"Nah," Chase shook his head. He couldn't be bothered. He had a date with a bottle of gin.

And as it turned out, neither could Taub.

Chase's drinking escalated over the years. It kept him from thinking about his failures, but it did nothing to guarantee his success. He went through the motions at the hospital, and his natural skill and ability kept him from screwing up too badly. It was a good thing he rarely operated on patients any longer.

When Rachel Taub divorced her husband, she lost both of the men in her life. Davey Musgrove was adopted by a younger couple, and she rarely saw him again.

Taub soon tired of his casual affairs. Forbidden fruit quickly sours at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

And House? He was still undeniably brilliant, but he lost his drive as the years went by. The medical mysteries became too easy to challenge him. His work became routine and boring. The only games he played, he played by himself. Cuddy had eventually found Mr. Right and married him, and a happy marriage turned her into a spineless adversary.

Music remained House's only solace, but arthritis limited his playing.

Soon the aches and pains that come with age joined the persistent ache in his thigh. He never went back to Vicodin.

Lagavulin single malt became his drug of choice to numb the emotional pain, as well as the physical.

And me? I'm still living with House and looking for love in all the wrong places.

I'm miserable.

We all are.

THE END


End file.
